LACHES DOCTRINE KNOCKS OUT CLAIM BY TEACHER WITH SIX-MONTH RULE

August 9, 2004

Steven P. Garmisa
Hoey & Farina Attorney
garmisa@hoeyfarina.com
1-888-425-1212

Eliminating lingering confusion about whether the defense of laches is limited to equitable actions, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that laches can be used to knock out a claim for plain old money. Bills v. Board of Education of Cicero School District 99, 2004 WL 1440664 (1st Dist., June 28).

Bills also stands as a warning to Illinois attorneys representing fired government employees to file any claim for reinstatement within six months -- even if litigation was delayed because of ongoing settlement negotiations.

Finally, although laches applied because the plaintiff, a school teacher, did not file a claim within six months, a judgment for the teacher was reversed, and the case was remanded for further proceedings, because the school district failed to prove that it was prejudiced by the delay.

Marie Bills, a probationary teacher who taught English as a second language, filed a complaint alleging that the Cicero School District failed to give her the notice required by section 24-11 of the School Code that she was not going to be rehired for the following school year.

The Cook County Circuit Court agreed with Bills, entering a judgment ordering the district to pay $27,164 in damages, plus prejudgment interest, costs and fees.

The district appealed arguing, among other things, that the complaint was barred by laches because Bills filed her complaint 19 months after a union official told her she did not receive the required notice from the district.

Here are some highlights of Justice Joseph Gordon's opinion (with various omissions not noted in the quoted text):

"The laches doctrine is defined as the neglect or omission to assert a right which, taken in conjunction with a lapse of time and circumstances causing prejudice to the opposite party, will operate as a bar to a suit. A plaintiff must have knowledge of his right but fail to assert it in a timely manner for laches to apply.

"Laches is an affirmative defense, requiring a two-prong analysis, which addresses whether the employer was prejudiced by the delay, as stated above, and whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a reasonable excuse for the delay.

"In this case, defendant cites Schultheis v. City of Chicago, 240 Ill. 167 (1909), for the employment of a per se six-month laches rule developed specifically for cases involving the termination of a public employee.

"In Schultheis, the plaintiff, a terminated policeman, brought a petition for mandamus against the City of Chicago, requesting that his name be restored to the police payroll. The Supreme Court determined that, '[A] member of the Chicago police force claiming to have been wrongfully removed would be barred by laches from his right to have the record of the civil service commissioners reviewed by certiorari if he delayed more than six months in beginning his suit, unless the delay was satisfactorily explained by the petition for the writ.'

"This general proposition originated in City of Chicago v. Condell, 224 Ill. 595 (1906), where the Illinois Supreme Court determined that a public servant's delay in filing a petition for common-law writ of certiorari is deemed unreasonable not merely due to the lapse of time, but where a detriment or inconvenience to the public results. Where a public servant delays in filing his action, a detriment to the public inherently results because the restoration of the plaintiff to his prior position confers upon him the right to require the payment of his salary up to that date.

"Therefore, '[A] party is required to act speedily in making his application and any unreasonable delay will warrant the refusal of the writ.'

"The specific six-month rule later emerged in Clark v. City of Chicago, 233 Ill. 113 (1908). At the time Clark was decided, there existed a statutory method to review judgments of justices of the peace by writ of certiorari, which carried with it a six-month statute of limitations.

"The Clark court analogized such review to the review of an order of removal of a police officer by the civil service commission; it thereby instituted the six-month laches rule for police officers, requiring presentation of a petition for writ of certiorari within six months of the entry of the order to be reviewed unless the officer provided a reasonable excuse for the delay.

"Since Schultheis, Condell and Clark, the six-month rule has been employed in various other public employee cases, including Summers v. Village of Durand, 267 Ill.App.3d 767 (1994).

"In Summers, the chief of police filed an action for breach of contract against the defendant, seeking back pay and lost benefits. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, asserting, among other things, that the action was barred by the laches doctrine. The trial court dismissed the action.

"In reversing the dismissal, the reviewing court held: 'Courts have devised a rule to be used in applying the doctrine of laches to causes of action brought by discharged public sector employees seeking reinstatement and/or back pay. The rule is that a delay of longer than six months from the date of termination to the filing of suit is per se unreasonable and will justify dismissal on the ground of laches if (a) the plaintiff can show no reasonable excuse for the delay and (b) the employer would suffer prejudice by having to pay both a replacement worker's salary and a successful plaintiff's back wages during the period of delay.'

"The Cicero School District contends the plaintiff's action here was barred by this six-month laches rule, as it was an action for wrongful termination and back wages by a public employee.
"Although plaintiff urges, for the reasons discussed below, that the six-month laches rule should not apply to cases such as this one involving the dismissal of a non-tenured teacher under the School Code, we disagree and see no reason to differentiate teachers from policemen, firefighters and hospital workers, as the same reasoning discussed above applies to all civil servants.

"Plaintiff first contends that the laches doctrine is not applicable in this case because it is an equitable doctrine, which cannot be used to bar an action for monetary damages. This argument has been previously rejected on a number of occasions.

"While we agree that traditionally, statutes of limitation were generally applied to legal actions and the laches doctrine was applied to those actions based in equity, such 'mechanical' applications are no longer followed. Courts have applied laches to 'equity-like' actions, such as mandamus, to quasi- equitable suits, to actions where equitable considerations are at the heart of a claim actually based in law, as well as to purely legal claims. For instance, in Schultheis, the Supreme Court specifically stated that the laches defense was applicable to pseudo-equitable proceedings at law, such as actions in certiorari and quo warranto.

"Subsequently, the 1st and 4th District Appellate courts each explicitly stated that the laches doctrine is not limited solely to suits in equity and is applicable to cases at law in which a plaintiff seeks back pay for wrongful termination, in addition to reinstatement.
"This approach finds full fruition in Summers, where the court applied the six-month laches doctrine in an action where only monetary damages were sought.

"Along these lines, we note that this action began as one seeking reinstatement and back wages, however, the reinstatement action was ultimately dismissed by the trial court, resulting in the remaining claim solely for monetary damages. As a result, we disagree with plaintiff that the six-month laches rule cannot be applied to a public employee case seeking monetary damages in the form of back pay, particularly where the action was originally filed as one seeking reinstatement, as this one was.

"Plaintiff next contends that the laches defense cannot be applied to a School Code case because the applicable statute of limitations supersedes the common law six-month laches rule. We disagree. Plaintiff asserts that because the School Code does not provide its own statute of limitations, it is covered by section 13-205 of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure, which provides for a 'catch-all' five-year statute of limitations.

"Plaintiff argues that where the limitations period is provided by statute, a judicially created rule, such as the six-month laches rule, cannot supplant the five-year legislated period. Instead, the Code of Civil Procedure should supersede the common-law rule.

"Again, this argument fails to distinguish cases arising under the School Code from others in which the laches doctrine barred a cause of action despite the existence of an applicable statute of limitations. As a result, we fail to see why the statute of limitations period in this case should be treated differently.

"We further note that in cases outside the realm of public employees, Illinois courts, or courts applying Illinois law, have often invoked the laches doctrine in contravention to the ordinary limitations period which would apply by statute. Maksym v. Loesch, 937 F.2d 1237, 1248 (7th Cir. 1991), citing Slatin's Properties Inc. v. Hassler, 53 Ill.2d 325, 330 (1972).

"In Maksym, the [7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] reasoned that such applications did not act in contravention to the statutory time limitations because laches, by requiring proof not only of unwarranted delay in bringing suit but also of harm to the defendant as a result of the delay, 'is really a doctrine of estoppel rather than a substitute for a statute of limitations.'

"Accordingly, we need not presume that laches is in conflict with the otherwise applicable statute of limitations, as application of the laches doctrine is limited to instances where there is no reasonable excuse for the plaintiff's delay, resulting in prejudice to the defendant. In all other instances, the statutory limitations period applies. Therefore, laches is simply the permissible interposition of an equitable defense in an action at law."

"Following this determination that the laches doctrine can be applied to an action brought under the School Code, we must determine whether the doctrine could not have barred plaintiff's cause of action as a matter of law, as determined by the trial court.

"As previously stated, laches serves to bar an action for back pay by a public-sector employee where the action is filed more than six months after discharge (or six months after the plaintiff acquires knowledge of his right), the delay in filing causes prejudice to the defendant, and the plaintiff offers no reasonable excuse for the delay.

"In this case, plaintiff filed her cause of action 14 months after she acquired actual knowledge that she might have a cause of action under section 24-11 of the School Code. Specifically, plaintiff was told by [a union official] around Sept. 5, 2000, that District 99 'owed' her a job under section 24-11, but she did not file her complaint until Nov. 16, 2001. Clearly, her complaint was filed more than six months after she acquired knowledge of her right.

"Despite plaintiff's tardy filing, the trial court found that plaintiff offered a reasonable excuse for her delay. She asserted that she was waiting for [the union official] to conclude negotiations with the district in order to avoid instituting legal action.

"We disagree with the trial court that this was a valid excuse.
"The district did not induce plaintiff to wait to file her action and was in no way responsible for plaintiff's delay.

"Nevertheless, this does not automatically lead to the conclusion that plaintiff's action should have been barred. For laches to apply, there must also be a showing of prejudice.

"In this case, there is no indication from the record that the district hired an [English as a second language] teacher to replace plaintiff for the 2000-01 school year. Without such information, prejudice cannot be established, and therefore, whether laches should have barred plaintiff's cause of action was a question of fact, which was improper for determination on summary judgment."

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