Patricia Donahue, Individually and In Her Capacity v. United States of America

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Before Torruella, Selya and Howard, Circuit Judges.

These are the latest in a series of civil cases arising out of the unholy alliance between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a notorious mobster, James J. “Whitey” Bulger. In this chapter of the sordid saga, the estates and heirs of two men killed on Bulger’s orders sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for leaking confidential information to Bulger and enabling his reign of terror. The proceedings below culminated in multi-million-dollar judgments for the plaintiffs. The principal issue on appeal is whether the suits were timely filed.

Two different district judges answered this question in the affirmative. Since then, this court has passed upon the timeliness issue in a number of similar cases and refined the legal doctrines that inform the decisional calculus. In fidelity to this intervening authority, we conclude that the suits were not timely filed and, therefore, reverse. We do so, however, without endorsing the FBI’s conduct, which we regard as reprehensible.

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