Background
Pro se plaintiff Arthur Samodovitz filed suit on January 27, 2025, seeking compensation for an alleged Fifth Amendment taking of his contract rights as a bondholder. He claimed the government’s enactment of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) in 2016 violated the Fifth Amendment by abrogating his valuable contractual rights to receive interest and principal payments on his bonds.
The defendant moved to dismiss on September 2, 2025, arguing the complaint was untimely and failed to state a claim. Samodovitz countered that the statute of limitations was tolled under American Pipe class action tolling principles, citing a class action filed on June 29, 2022, and relying on the Federal Circuit’s decision in Bright v. United States, which had previously treated class action tolling as statutory rather than equitable in nature.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Federal Claims dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2501, the six-year statute of limitations for claims against the United States. The court found that Samodovitz’s claim accrued on June 30, 2016, when PROMESA was enacted, and his complaint filed on January 27, 2025, was filed more than eight years after accrual, plainly exceeding the statutory window.
Critically, the court rejected Samodovitz’s reliance on Bright v. United States and American Pipe class action tolling. Although the Federal Circuit in Bright had treated class action tolling as statutory and thus exempt from the equitable tolling bar in § 2501, the Supreme Court subsequently clarified in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc., 582 U.S. 497 (2017), that American Pipe tolling is equitable in nature, not statutory. Since 28 U.S.C. § 2501 expressly prohibits equitable tolling and cannot be waived due to its jurisdictional character, class action tolling does not apply to suspend the § 2501 limitations period. Therefore, the class action filed in 2022 did not toll the statute of limitations for Samodovitz’s individual claim.
Key Takeaways
- The six-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2501 is jurisdictional and cannot be waived or subject to equitable tolling under any circumstances.
- Class action tolling under American Pipe is equitable tolling, not statutory tolling, and thus is prohibited by § 2501 despite prior Federal Circuit precedent suggesting otherwise.
- Bondholders cannot use a timely class action filing to extend their individual claims beyond the six-year window for seeking compensation from the federal government.
- The Supreme Court’s CalPERS decision effectively overrules the Federal Circuit’s prior approach in Bright regarding class action tolling under § 2501.
Why It Matters
This decision resolves an important tension between Federal Circuit precedent and Supreme Court doctrine regarding class action tolling under the Tucker Act. The court’s holding clarifies that prior Federal Circuit cases allowing class action tolling as an exception to § 2501 are incompatible with the Supreme Court’s clarification that American Pipe tolling is inherently equitable. This has broad implications for scores of claimants injured by PROMESA who were members of the class action dismissed in Dinh v. United States—they cannot now file individual suits after the six-year window closes, even though a class action was timely filed.
For practitioners, the decision reinforces that § 2501’s statute of limitations is truly absolute: no equitable doctrines, no exceptions for class members, no tolling of any kind save statute-specific provisions like estoppel of the government itself. Claimants must file within six years of accrual or face jurisdictional dismissal.
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