Katergaris v. City Of New York

Background

Serafim Georgios Katergaris brought a putative class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims against state or local governments for violations of federal rights. He alleged that the City of New York’s system for assessing and reviewing $1,000 fines against property owners who failed to file required low-pressure-boiler inspection reports violated due process because owners lacked a meaningful opportunity to contest or appeal the fines.

Katergaris and his then-wife purchased the property at issue in November 2014 and sold it in June 2021. A previous owner had failed to file a required inspection report for the 2013 inspection cycle. The City issued a violation in March 2015, listing Katergaris as the property owner. Katergaris maintained that he and his then-wife did not receive the notice and that he first learned about the violation in 2021, when he was selling the property. He paid the $1,000 fine under protest on June 9, 2021, and later sought a refund and a hearing, but those requests were denied.

Katergaris filed this lawsuit on August 30, 2022. The City initially moved to dismiss the amended complaint. Because the City relied on evidence outside the pleadings to argue that the claim was untimely, the court converted that portion of the motion into a motion for summary judgment and allowed limited discovery about when the violation notice was mailed and received.

Timeliness and the mailing presumption

The parties agreed that a three-year limitations period applied to Katergaris’s Section 1983 claim. The dispute was when the claim accrued. The City argued that it accrued in 2015, while Katergaris argued that it accrued in 2021, when he says he first learned of the violation.

The court explained that a Section 1983 claim accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury. To decide when that occurred, the court applied the federal common-law “mailbox rule,” which presumes receipt when the sender shows that a notice was properly addressed and mailed through regular office procedures. Once the presumption applies, the recipient must provide specific evidence showing that the notice may not have been received or that the regular mailing process was not followed. A simple denial of receipt is not enough.

The court found that the City triggered the presumption. The evidence showed that the notice was addressed to the correct property address and that the City, Vanguard Direct, and AST Document Solutions used established procedures to prepare and mail the notices by first-class mail. Testimony and related records showed that those procedures were followed for the 2015 mailing. The court ruled that the City did not need to provide testimony from every third-party vendor involved in the mailing.

The court also rejected Katergaris’s argument that first-class mail should receive a weaker presumption than certified mail. It concluded that the Second Circuit’s general mailbox rule did not condition the presumption on certified mail in this context.

Failure to rebut the presumption

The court found that Katergaris did not produce enough evidence to create a genuine dispute about receipt. His denial that he and his then-wife received the notice, along with his general account of paying other fines on time, was insufficient by itself. The court also found that the evidence about how mail was collected at the property did not establish non-receipt. Katergaris was generally not living at the property in March 2015, his then-wife frequently traveled for work, and the property did not have a mailbox; mail could be left in various locations.

The court further rejected reliance on the possibility that the notice had been returned as undeliverable. Although the City estimated that no more than 500 of approximately 18,000 notices were returned, the record did not show that Katergaris’s notice was among them. The court considered that possibility speculative, particularly because the notice was correctly addressed, postage was handled through the City’s permit, and Katergaris did not identify prior problems receiving mail at the property.

Ruling

The court held that the presumption of receipt was unrebutted. It therefore treated Katergaris’s claim as having accrued in 2015. Because he filed suit in 2022, more than three years later, the court held that the claim was time-barred.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer granted the City’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case as time-barred. The court did not reach the City’s other arguments for dismissal. The Clerk was directed to terminate the pending motions and close the case. The opinion does not state that the dismissal was with or without prejudice.