Brianna Ray, as Administrator of the Estate of ROBERT C. RAY, deceased v. Chauncey C. Maher, Iii

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 11-1409
BRIANNA RAY, as Administrator of the
Estate of ROBERT C. RAY, deceased,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
CHAUNCEY C. MAHER, III, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of Illinois.
No. 10 C 3199—Michael M. Mihm, Judge.
ARGUED SEPTEMBER 16, 2011—DECIDED NOVEMBER 1, 2011
Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and WOOD and
TINDER, Circuit Judges.
TINDER, Circuit Judge. Nearly three years after Robert C.
Ray died in custody at the Sangamon County Jail, the
administrator of Ray’s estate filed an eight-count com-
plaint against the jail’s doctor (Dr. Maher), the county
sheriff, and seventeen correctional officers and nurses
employed by the county. Count I is a combined Wrongful

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2 No. 11-1409
Death Act, 740 ILCS 180/2, and Survival Act, 755 ILCS 5/27-
6, negligence claim against Dr. Maher. Counts II-VIII
allege violations of Ray’s Fourteenth Amendment right
to basic medical services under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and
name all defendants. The district court dismissed counts
II-VIII as time-barred by the two-year Illinois statute
of limitations for personal injury actions and declined
to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining
state-law claim. The plaintiff argues that the district
court should have tolled the limitations period for the
§ 1983 claims because the sole beneficiary of Ray’s
estate was a minor when Ray’s cause of action arose.
(She does not challenge the district court’s discretionary
declination to retain supplemental jurisdiction over
the state law claim in Count I. She only asks for it to be
reinstated if the § 1983 claims are.) As the district court
recognized, her argument is meritless. We affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
Ray was arrested for contempt of court on September 25,
2007. Before being placed in the Sangamon County Jail,
Ray was treated for alcohol withdrawal at St. John’s
Hospital. He was ill again soon after being jailed, but,
according to the complaint, his repeated requests for
medication were denied. He was assigned “high risk”
status and scheduled to be observed every fifteen min-
utes. When Dr. Maher examined Ray at approxi-
mately 1:30 p.m. on the 28th, he noted that Ray
was diaphoretic and disoriented and seemed to be hal-
lucinating. Dr. Maher prescribed Haldol and Libruim.

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No. 11-1409 3
The drugs were eventually administered, but Ray was
not taken to a hospital. By 11 p.m. on the 28th, a correc-
tional officer saw that Ray was sweating, mumbling
incoherently, and not responding to his name. Ray was
totally unresponsive by 11:45 p.m. and EMTs declared
him dead just before midnight.
Gina Miller, Ray’s ex-wife, was named administrator
of Ray’s estate on August 4, 2010. She filed this action
in the Central District of Illinois on August 6, 2010. The
defendants filed a motion to dismiss, which pointed out
that the § 1983 claims were not filed within the ap-
plicable two-year limitations period. The district court
granted the motion, indicating that the age of a benefi-
ciary is irrelevant to the limitations analysis for a
claim brought by the estate.
Brianna Ray, the daughter of Robert C. Ray and Gina
Miller and the sole beneficiary of her father’s estate,
recently turned eighteen and replaced Miller as admin-
istrator. We note this change primarily to explain the
case caption; it has no effect on our decision.
II. DISCUSSION
We review de novo a district court’s order granting a
Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss based on the statute of
limitations. Middleton v. City of Chicago, 578 F.3d 655,
657 (7th Cir. 2009).
Notwithstanding the sad facts underlying this case,
the estate’s § 1983 claims are obviously untimely and
must be dismissed. Federal law does not set the limita-

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4 No. 11-1409
tions period in § 1983 actions. Instead, 42 U.S.C. § 1988(a)
instructs us to look to state law. Specifically, we look
to the limitations period for personal injury actions.
Anderson v. Romero, 42 F.3d 1121, 1124 (7th Cir. 1994). In
Illinois, that period is two years. 735 ILCS 5/13-202;
Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 387 (2007); Ashafa v. City of
Chicago, 146 F.3d 459, 462 (7th Cir. 1998). The limitations
period is applied in its entirety, complete with related
tolling provisions. Hardin v. Staub, 490 U.S. 536, 538 (1989)
(“Courts . . . should not unravel state limitations rules
unless their full application would defeat the goals of
the federal statute at issue.”). From the time his cause
of action accrued, between September 25th and 28th,
2007, Ray and then his representative had two years to
sue for violations of Ray’s constitutional rights. 735
ILCS 5/13-209(a)(1). Because the former administrator,
Miller, was (and had to be) an adult, and because there
is no allegation that the defendants have interfered
with her ability to state a claim, the plaintiff has
presented no justifiable reason to toll the limitations
period. The age of the beneficiary of the estate makes
no difference. In order to be timely, Ray’s § 1983 claims
had to be filed by September 28, 2009. This suit was
filed more than ten months late, on August 6, 2010. The
district court, therefore, properly dismissed Ray’s § 1983
claims. Logan v. Wilkins, 644 F.3d 577, 582 (7th Cir. 2011)
(explaining that although a statute of limitations de-
fense is not usually part of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss, “when the allegations of the complaint reveal
that relief is barred by the applicable statute of limita-
tions, the complaint is subject to dismissal for failure to
state a claim”).

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No. 11-1409 5
The plaintiff’s argument to the contrary—that the
limitations period should be tolled because the
beneficiary of the estate was a minor when the claim
arose—is both novel and unsupported. Imagine if she
were correct. We can presume that there are, and have
been, thousands of estates with minor beneficiaries in
Illinois alone. Is it possible that claims belonging to
those estates are tolled until the beneficiaries reach the
age of majority? That would be an extraordinary right
for estates. And if estates did have such a right, we
would expect it to be reflected in the Illinois code, or
in at least a single case, in some jurisdiction. The
plaintiff can find no such law or case, of course,
because there is no such right.
When someone entitled to sue under § 1983 dies, and
the claim inures to his or her estate, the administrator
must diligently pursue the claim or lose it, much like
the allegedly injured person entitled to bring the
claim in the first place. An administrator’s position is not
identical to the injured party’s because Illinois gives a
representative up to an extra year to bring a claim if
the person originally entitled to bring it dies with less
than a year left in the limitations period. 735 ILCS 5/13-
209(a)(1). But that nuance has no bearing on this
case since Ray died the same day as his claims ac-
crued. A representative had to bring the estate’s
claims within two years of that day, September 28, 2007.
Unfortunately for Brianna, the beneficiary of Ray’s
estate, that is not what happened and the estate’s § 1983
claims are now time-barred.

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6 No. 11-1409
The argument that Brianna’s age somehow matters is
belied by another settled point of law: § 1983 claims are
personal to the injured party. See, e.g., Russ v. Watts, 414
F.3d 783, 790 (7th Cir. 2005) (holding that parents may
sue only for constitutional injury to themselves, not for
constitutional injuries to their son); Estate of Johnson by
Castle v. Libertyville, 819 F.2d 174, 178 (7th Cir. 1987)
(holding that parents cannot recover under § 1983 for
injuries to their daughter, but only for injuries to them-
selves); Spence v. Staras, 507 F.2d 554, 557 (7th Cir. 1974)
(holding that a parent could sue only in a representative
and not an individual capacity for a deprivation of her
son’s constitutional rights). Until now, our cases have
left this bedrock principle of § 1983 law in the back-
ground and it has partially surfaced mainly where
parents have sued for injures to their children. But other
circuits have been more explicit about the general point.
See, e.g,. Claybrook v. Birchwell, 199 F.3d 350, 357 (6th
Cir. 2000) (a § 1983 claim is “entirely personal to the
direct victim of the alleged constitutional tort . . . only the
purported victim, or his estate’s representative(s), may
prosecute a section 1983 claim”); Archuleta v. McShan,
897 F.2d 495, 497 (10th Cir. 1990) (it is a “well-settled
principle that a section 1983 claim must be based upon
the violation of plaintiff’s personal rights, and not the
rights of someone else”). So, if § 1983 claims are
personal to the party alleging a constitutional injury,
facts about Brianna—as a beneficiary of Ray’s estate, as
a minor, or as a party entitled to bring a state-law
wrongful death claim—could only matter for the limita-
tions period if she were alleging a constitutional injury

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No. 11-1409 7
to herself. As set out in the complaint and as conceded
at argument, however, the § 1983 claims in this case
involve only the “deprivation of Robert Ray’s 14th
Amendment rights to basic health care services.” Brianna
has not alleged a constitutional injury to herself based
on loss of society with her father, so she does not seek
to have us address whether the rule in Russ, 414 F.3d
at 790, applies to a claim by a child for constitutional
injuries to her parent.
Finally, we suspect that the plaintiff has confused the
way state law factors into remedies available under § 1983
with the way state law determines the limitations period.
With regard to the limitations period, the law could not
be more straightforward: courts look to the state per-
sonal injury statute of limitations and its attendant
tolling provisions. The limitations period, therefore, has
nothing to do with the Illinois Wrongful Death Act and
does not depend on who may benefit from the suit. Reme-
dies, however, are different. An estate bringing a dece-
dent’s § 1983 claims may seek damages allowable under
a state wrongful death statute. See, e.g., Bass v. Wallenstein,
769 F.2d 1173, 1189 (7th Cir. 1985) (considering the Illinois
Wrongful Death Act to determine the proper measure of
damages in a § 1983 suit alleging violations of decedent’s
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights). But just
because it may be appropriate to consider the Illinois
Wrongful Death Act in relation to remedies does not mean
that same state law has any relevance when determining
the limitations period. Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 276-
77 (1985), made it clear that the only state-law limita-
tions provisions relevant to § 1983 claims are those that

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8 No. 11-1409
pertain to personal injury actions. After Wilson, courts are
no longer free to borrow “the most appropriate [limita-
tions period] provided by state law.” Johnson v. Railway
Express Agency, 421 U.S. 454, 462 (1975). But, having
confused how we may determine the correct measure
of damages with the way we must analyze the limita-
tions period, that is just what the plaintiff has asked
us to do.
III. CONCLUSION
The statute of limitations has run on the estate’s § 1983
claims and they were properly dismissed.
AFFIRMED.
11-1-11

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