ST. PAUL, Minn. (Legal Newsline) - A lawsuit claiming Duluth city officials retaliated against a property owner for exercising his right of free speech may be barred by the statute of limitations, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled, reversing an appeals court that said the 20-year battle between the city and the property owner could be a “continuing violation.”
While the Minnesota Supreme Court has applied the continuing violation doctrine to lawsuits over hostile work environments and public nuisance and wouldn’t rule it out in other cases, the court said it didn’t apply to the feud between Dr. Eric Ringsred and the City of Duluth.
“Even assuming the doctrine could apply to such claims, it does not apply here because the acts of retaliation that Ringsred alleges are discrete acts, each of which was actionable when committed,” the court ruled in a Sept. 13 decision that was supported by the League of Minnesota Cities and the Minnesota County Attorneys Association.
Dr. Ringsred sued the city in 2020 under the federal civil rights law known as Section 1983, which provides for damages for plaintiffs whose constitutional rights have been violated by government officials. He claimed city officials repeatedly harassed him after he won a court ruling in 1998 declaring part of downtown a historic district.
Dr. Ringsred owned a downtown building that fell into disrepair and was described in a Duluth News Tribune article in 2009 titled “Officials Roust Cellar Dwellers from Duluth Buildings.” Ringsred said the article defamed him because it ran on the front page of the newspaper and accused him of fire code violations, although the building did burn in 2010.
He restored the building but then failed to pay property taxes and it was seized by St. Louis County in 2015. Dr. Ringsred tried to buy it back in 2016 but the Duluth Economic Development Authority bought it instead, so he sued the city and DEDA, claiming they conspired to keep him from buying the building and preventing it from being demolished. He sued the city again in 2020, claiming retaliation for speaking out against city building policy. He also sued journalists and the former city attorney.
A trial court dismissed his First Amendment retaliation claim as barred by the statute of limitations. The court also said Dr. Ringsred hadn’t shown the city’s actions would mean “a person of ordinary firmness would be deterred from speaking out or continuing to litigate,” as required under Section 1983. But an appeals court reversed, saying Ringsred’s claim of a “20-year `running battle’” met the test of a continuing violation.
Section 1983 doesn’t have a statute of limitations, but the U.S. Supreme Court has instructed state courts to apply the appropriate own time limit under state law. In Minnesota, the time limit for personal injury lawsuits is six years, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled, meaning any claims from before April 2014 would be time-barred unless the continuing violation doctrine applied. It ordered the case back to trial court to determine which claims survive.