OREGON
Leagle
JOHN DOE 150, etc., Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
THE ARCHDIOCESE OF PORTLAND IN OREGON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 10-36126.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted February 7, 2012, Seattle, Washington.
Filed March 1, 2012.
Before: GOULD, SCHROEDER, Circuit Judges, and BEISTLINE,** Chief District Judge.
MEMORANDUM*
The undisputed facts of this case and the procedural history are known to the parties. Appellant, John Doe 150, appeals the United States District Court for the District of Oregon’s decision that, as a matter of law, delayed discovery of the causal connection between Doe’s known sexual abuse at the hands of a priest and the consequent harm to Doe was unreasonable. Doe claims that the district court committed two errors when it granted summary judgment in favor of Appellee, the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. Doe argues that the district court: (1) usurped the role of the jury in determining the reasonableness of Doe’s delayed discovery as a question of law; and (2) ignored the compelling testimony of Doe’s expert concerning whether the nature of Doe’s harm might reasonably have masked the causal connection between his childhood abuse and the consequent harm. The district court found that no trier of fact could conclude that it was reasonable for Doe to fail to discover the causal connection between the abuse he suffered and his consequent harm prior to the bankruptcy court’s claims bar date of April 29, 2005, or prior to the applicable Oregon statute of limitations deadline of June 6, 2003. We affirm the lower court’s decision.
Standard of Review
We review de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment. Davis v. Las Vegas, 478 F.3d 1048, 1053 (9th Cir. 2007). The parties argue that we should use a clear error standard of review. The clear error standard applies to the mixed question of law and fact of whether a person should have discovered the existence and cause of their injuries. Colleen v. United States, 843 F.2d 329, 331 (9th Cir. 1987). That case was an appeal from the district court’s ruling on the merits, not an appeal from the grant of summary judgment. We decline to depart from our well-established precedent that we review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Under the de novo standard, a reviewing “`court should make an independent determination of the issues’ and should `not . . . give any special weight to the [prior] determination of'” a lower court. United States v. Raddatz, 447 U.S. 667, 690 (1980) (quoting United States v. First City Nat’l Bank of Houston, 386 U.S. 361, 368 (1967)).
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