WATSON v. HARMON

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA

TRAVIS L. WATSON, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

v. ) 1:21CV877

)

LISA HARMON, et al., )

)

Defendant. )

ORDER

The Recommendation of the United States Magistrate Judge was filed with the Court

in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 636(b) and, on January 4, 2022, was served on the parties in

this action. (ECF Nos. 3, 4.) It recommended that this action be dismissed pursuant to 28

U.S.C. § 1915A for failing to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Plaintiff filed

objections to the Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation, (see ECF No. 5). The Court has

appropriately reviewed the Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation and has made a de novo

determination in accord with the Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation. The Court therefore

adopts the Magistrate Judge’s Recommendation.

Plaintiff also filed as part of his objections a request to amend his Complaint, which

the Court will allow. However, for the following reasons, the amendment does not change

the outcome of the case. Any proposed amendment remains subject to a mandatory review

under 18 U.S.C. § 1915A and must be dismissed if it “(1) is frivolous, malicious, or fails to

state a claim upon which relief may be granted; or (2) seeks monetary relief from a defendant

who is immune from such relief.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b).

As to the first basis for dismissal, the United States Supreme Court has explained that

“a complaint, containing as it does both factual allegations and legal conclusions, is frivolous

where it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325

(1989). “The word ‘frivolous’ is inherently elastic and not susceptible to categorical definition.

. . . The term’s capaciousness directs lower courts to conduct a flexible analysis, in light of the

totality of the circumstances, of all factors bearing upon the frivolity of a claim.” Nagy v. Federal

Med. Ctr. Butner, 376 F.3d 252, 256-57 (4th Cir. 2004) (some internal quotation marks omitted).

As part of this review, the Court may anticipate affirmative defenses that clearly appear on the

face of the complaint. Nasim v. Warden, Md. House of Corr., 64 F.3d 951, 954 (4th Cir. 1995)

(en banc); Todd v. Baskerville, 712 F.2d 70, 74 (4th Cir. 1983).

The Supreme Court further has identified factually frivolous complaints as ones

involving “allegations that are fanciful, fantastic, and delusional. As those words suggest, a

finding of factual frivolousness is appropriate when the facts alleged rise to the level of the

irrational or the wholly incredible, whether or not there are judicially noticeable facts available

to contradict them.” Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 32-33 (1992) (internal citations and

quotation marks omitted). In making such findings, this Court may “apply common sense.”

Nasim, 64 F.3d at 954.

A plaintiff “fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted,” 28 U.S.C.

§ 1915A(b)(1), when the complaint does not “contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true,

to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)

(emphasis added) (internal citations omitted) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544,

570 (2007)). “Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with’ a defendant’s

liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of “entitlement to

relief.”’” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557). This standard “demands more than an

unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Id. In other words, “the tenet

that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable

to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by

mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.” Id.1

Plaintiff’s original complaint is being dismissed because it called into question

Plaintiff’s state criminal convictions from 2005 and 2018. Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477

(1994), bars such claims. Plaintiff states in his Notice of Objections and Request to Amend

that this conclusion is “not wholly accurate” because his claims relate to a state habeas action

and that action “did not challenge the 2005 and 2018 convictions per se.” (ECF No. 5 at 1.)2

This statement ignores the fact that Heck bars not only claims brought under § 1983 which

explicitly or directly challenge criminal convictions, but also those where “a judgment in favor

of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” Heck,

512 U.S. at 487. Therefore, to the extent that Plaintiff’s original or amended claims necessarily

1Although the Supreme Court has reiterated that “[a] document filed pro se is to be liberally construed and a pro

se complaint, however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted

by lawyers,” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted), the

United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has “not read Erickson to undermine Twombly’s

requirement that a pleading contain more than labels and conclusions,” Giarratano v. Johnson, 521 F.3d 298, 304

n.5 (4th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted) (applying Twombly standard in dismissing pro se

complaint); accord Atherton v. District of Columbia Off. of Mayor, 567 F.3d 672, 681-82 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (“A pro se

complaint . . . ‘must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.’ But even a

pro se complainant must plead ‘factual matter’ that permits the court to infer ‘more than the mere possibility of

misconduct.’” (quoting Erickson, 551 U.S. at 94, and Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 697, respectively)).

imply the invalidity of his prior convictions, whether or not he seeks to directly challenge them,

Heck still bars those claims.

To any extent that Heck does not bar Plaintiff’s proposed amended claims, they fail for

other reasons. The application of the appropriate statute of limitations is an affirmative

defense that the Court may consider in this context. See Eriline Co. S.A. v. Johnson, 440 F.3d

648, 655-56 (4th Cir. 2006) (citing Nasim, 64 F.3d at 955). The statute of limitations in this

case is three years. See Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 276-80 (1985) (holding that, in section

1983 actions, state statute of limitations for personal injury applies); Brooks v. City of Winston

Salem, 85 F.3d 178, 181 (4th Cir. 1996) (applying North Carolina’s three-year statute of

limitations for personal injuries to section 1983 actions); N.C. Gen. Stat § 1-52 (establishing

three-year statute of limitations for personal injury). A plaintiff’s cause of action accrues, and

the statute of limitations runs, from the date on which he “possesses sufficient facts about the

harm done to him that reasonable inquiry will reveal his cause of action.” Nasim, 64 F.3d at

955.

The Complaint reveals that Plaintiff signed it on November 8, 2021, and that the Court

received it on November 12, 2021. Almost all alleged events in the Complaint and proposed

amendment occurred in 2016 or 2017 and Plaintiff would have known about them prior to

November of 2018. Therefore, they are barred by the applicable statute of limitations. The

only potential exceptions are alleged submissions of fraudulent documents in two habeas

corpus actions filed by Plaintiff in this court in Watson v. Daniels, No. 1:18CV451 (M.D.N.C.),

and Watson v. Daniels, No. 1:19CV249 (M.D.N.C). Plaintiff claims that certain defendants

supplied a counterfeit judgment from 2005 which Defendant Clarence Delforge then filed

with the Court in those actions. Reviewing the dockets in those cases, the last submission of

documents by Defendant Delforge in case 1:18CV451 occurred on June 19, 2018, or more

than three years before Plaintiff filed the current lawsuit. Therefore, the statute of limitations

bars any claims related to that case. As for case 1:19CV249, Defendant Delforge’s last

submission of documents occurred on May 1, 2019, which means that conduct falls within the

statute of limitations. Nevertheless, any submission of a judgment from 2005, whether

counterfeit or not, could not have harmed Plaintiff because his habeas corpus petition was

denied partially for being moot and partially as meritless for reasons not related to the nature

of the 2005 judgment. See Watson v. Daniels, No. 1:18CV431, 2019 WL 7863092, (M.D.N.C.

Dec. 3, 2019), report and rec. adopted 2020 WL 586684 (M.D.N.C. Feb. 6, 2020), appeal

dismissed 852 F. App’x 109 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 142 S.Ct. 722 (2021).

Plaintiff cannot show that the submission of the allegedly fraudulent judgment violated his

rights. Therefore, even considering Plaintiff’s amendments, his Complaint fails and, under §

1915A, this action will be dismissed.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Plaintiff’s request to amend raised in his

objections is GRANTED.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this action is DISMISSED pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

§ 1915A for failing to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

This, the 17th day of February 2022.

/s/ Loretta C. Biggs

United States District Judge