Some guidance on naming John Doe defendants in Section 1983 cases

One of the pitfalls in handling civil rights cases under Section 1983 is that you have to identify the correct defendant, usually a police or correction officer. It is not enough to name the officer's employer, as Section 1983 does not recognize respondeat superior liability, that is, the employer is not automatically liable just because one of its employees violated the law. That brings us to the pitfalls of naming John Doe defendants as placeholders until the plaintiff can figure out who the real defendant is.

The case is Ceara v. DOCCS Officer Joseph Deacon, issued on February 21. Under Barrow v. Weathersfield Police Dept., 66 F.3d 466 (2d Cir. 1995), you have to formally identify the John Doe defendants in your complaint within three years of the civil rights violation (which is the statute of limitation in New York). This is so because identifying the John Doe defendant is the equivalent of adding a new party , and new parties have to be added within the statute of limitations. On the other hand, if you are correcting a mistake in the caption (i.e., you named the wrong person), then the statute of limitations stopped running the day you filed the lawsuit provided the real defendant knew or should have known you intended to name him as the defendant all along. Further complicating things, in Krupski v. Costa Crociere, 560 U.S. 538 (2010), the Supreme Court said that "a plaintiff's knowledge of the existence of a party does not foreclose the possibility that she has made a mistake of identity about which that party should have even aware." As Krupski is a mistaken-defendant case and not a John Doe replacement case, it does not overrule Barrow. I know this is all very confusing, but if you handle Section 1983 cases, I also know you are reading this very attentively.

What happened here is that Plaintiff Ceara was an inmate at Fishkill Correctional Facility. He claims a correction officer physically assaulted him for no good reason. As plaintiff as tumbling down the concrete staircase as a result of this assault, he did not have the wherewithal to look at the officer's name tag to determine who he would name in his Section 1983 lawsuit. So plaintiff named this defendant "John Doe," noting further in the caption that the bad-guy worked on a particular shift on the day of the assault and that the bad-guy's brother -- last name "Deagan" -- also worked at the prison. When plaintiff finally got the correct name, "Joseph Deacon," he identified him in the amended complaint, but only after the three-year statute of limitations expired. The district court said this was too late, that plaintiff was simply naming the John Doe defendant outside the three-year limitations period. But the Second Circuit (Parker, Cabranes and Matsumoto (D.J.)), disagrees and reinstates the case.

The Second Circuit holds this is not really a John Doe placeholder case but a mistake case, as plaintiff did provide some of the defendant's identifying characteristics in the caption and almost got the last name right, referring to John Deacon as "Deagan." Unlike the John Doe cases, no new party was added when plaintiff amended the complaint. This means the amended complaint relates back to the original complaint, and plaintiff has his lawsuit back.