“This is a very sad case,” said one judge during oral argument before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “But it all comes down to tolling,” he concluded as the court heard an appeal from a mentally ill, homeless woman whose baby died after jail personnel ignored her labor and delayed taking her to the hospital. Her newborn baby was delivered but died soon after.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a civil rights claim by Judge James V. Selna of the District Court for the Central District of California. The claim was filed by plaintiff-appellant Sandra Quinones, individually and as successor in interest to her deceased baby. Senior Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld and Judge Ryan D. Nelson signed the disposition opinion with a separate concurrence by Judge Lawrence VanDyke. The disposition is not for publication and is not precedent.

Plaintiff-appellant Sandra Quinones went into labor when she was a pretrial detainee in an Orange County jail. She had been in jail for six months. When her water broke, she said she pushed the call button in her cell but was ignored by jail deputies for two hours. She alleged that there was “deliberate indifference to her medical needs.” Not only did jail guards delay taking her to the hospital; she said they even stopped at a Starbucks when they were finally on their way.

The district court dismissed her civil rights claim against Orange County because it was filed outside the allowable time frame permitted under the statute of limitations. As the court reviewed the reasons for the dismissal, the justices wrote that a motion to dismiss requires the court to “take all factual allegations as true, strip out all conclusory statements, and ask whether the plaintiff has stated a plausible, not just possible claim for relief.” This was not done.

At oral arguments, there was discussion about the contradictory pleas made during Quinones’s time in the Orange County jail system. First, she pled guilty to the offense with which she was charged because her sentence was resolved with time served. Next, she claimed that she had been incompetent to make that plea. Although she pled guilty, she still stated a claim for statutory tolling that would allow her suit to go forward despite the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Attorneys for Orange County said Quinones should be barred from claiming incapacity because it is not possible to be mentally incompetent when she was interacting with her appointed public defenders who said she was “intelligently and voluntarily waiving her rights to a jury trial and appeal.”

Resolution of these competing claims is important because a statute of limitations claim is tolled in California when a person is “lacking the legal capacity to make decisions.” The California statute also requires the plaintiff to demonstrate incapacity for the entire tolling period. At oral argument, the justices wondered how she could plead guilty and also claim lack of mental capacity.

The opinion reviewed Quinones’s allegations, including her claim that she suffers from several different conditions stemming from the day her child died. She said she was mentally impaired during her plea and believed someone else was controlling her mind. These claims, the justices concluded, are “enough to state a plausible claim.”

Returning to the District Court’s dismissal, the justices said that the lower court “did not (and could not) take judicial notice of the underlying fact of her mental state.” They said that plaintiff’s mental state is a disputed fact that needed to be examined before tolling the statute of limitations.

The justices then said that at this stage of the proceedings, the plaintiff’s guilty plea would not be an obstacle and dismissed the appellees’ arguments because precedents were improperly applied and because their estoppel argument “required additional fact finding.” Estoppel is a device by which a court can prevent a person from making assertions. Quinones claimed she was threatened by Orange County jail employees who said that it was her fault the baby died, and if she did anything about the behavior of jail personnel, she would be prosecuted for murder.

The court thus tolled the statute of limitations, reversed the District Court, and remanded the case back to it.

Justice VanDyke concurred but said it was for a different reason. He believed the district court should have addressed the plaintiff’s estoppel argument, which raised other key issues.

When Quinones’s case returns to the District Court, it will have company. In September 2019, two additional women joined her in a class-action suit that alleged civil rights abuses at Orange County jails. In addition to baby Quinones, two other babies whose mothers were in custody died shortly after being born. An Orange County sheriff told ABC News that the women’s “claims of inhumane treatment at county jails are inaccurate.”