John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. U.S.

The Supreme Court has decided that litigants bringing suit in the Court of Federal Claims must adhere to a strict six-year statute of limitations, even if the government is willing to waive that requirement.

The opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer for a seven-member majority, reaffirmed earlier decisions holding that the statute of limitations in the Court of Federal Claims is "jurisdictional," or a predicate for court authority. The petitioner had argued that the statute should be categorized as an "affirmative defense" that the defendant could raise or waive as it chose. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

The petitioner in the case was John R. Sand & Gravel Company, which had leased the rights to mine sand and gravel on a piece of Michigan property that also contained an old landfill. After thousands of drums of illegally-buried industrial waste were discovered in the landfill, the EPA started a clean-up operation.

In 1994 the EPA erected a security fence around its operations. Although John R. Sand kept mining other parts of the property, the fence blocked certain mining sites. John R. Sand's ability to mine the area was still impeded after the EPA moved the fence in 1998.

In 2002 John R. Sand brought suit against the government, arguing that the restrictions on its operations amounted to a Fifth Amendment taking of property. The Tucker Act waives the government's sovereign immunity for such suits, but the Act has a six-year statute of limitations.

John R. Sand argued that the issue in its claim originated in 1998 when the EPA moved its fence and for the first time obtained an order granting it unrestrained access to the property. The government countered that the claim actually accrued back in 1994 when the fence first went up, which would make the suit untimely. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that the suit was timely, but it also ruled that the government was not liable for a Fifth Amendment taking.

In John R. Sand's appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the parties focused solely on the Fifth Amendment takings issue. However, a group of corporations who were not parties to the case asked the court to consider whether the statute of limitations had run. Because federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear untimely claims, a ruling against John R. Sand & Gravel on the statute of limitations issue would foreclose its right to appeal the takings issue.

The Federal Circuit ruled that John R. Sand's claim accrued no later than 1994. Since the suit fell outside the time limit, the Federal Circuit ruled that it lacked jurisdiction and it dismissed the case without considering the merits of the Fifth Amendment claim.

In affirming that decision, the Court hewed to a series of cases dating back more than five decades, Soriano v. United States, 352 U.S. 70 (1957), Finn v. United States, 123 U.S. 227 (1887), and Kendall v. United States, 107 U.S. 123 (1883). The trio of cases had consistently held that the time-limit for federal claims cases was jurisdictional.

The Court held that although in the past forty years it had taken a more flexible approach to applying statutes of limitations in other laws permitting suit against the government, the doctrine of stare decisis compelled it to follow the earlier cases in ruling on the claims court time limit.

Justices Stevens dissented, and Justice Ginsburg joined his dissent. He explained that the intervening, more flexible holdings had in effect overruled the Soriano trio of cases. He urged that explicitly adopting a more flexible statute of limitations in federal claims court cases would bring those lawsuits into line with other suits against the government, and create a clearer rule for all those involved in such suits.

Justice Ginsburg wrote a separate dissent, decrying the majority's reliance on stare decisis as inappropriate where subsequent cases and political theory had moved towards a policy of treating the government as all litigants are treated. The dissenting justices' treatment of stare decisis is notable given the elaborate reliance on that doctrine by judicial nominees asked for their opinion on controversial political issues.

On May 29, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted review in the case.