Tom U.U. Okure v. Javan Owens and Daniel G. Lessard

In Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985), the Supreme Court held that the statute of limitation for all section 1983 claims must be borrowed from state law governing “the tort action for the recovery of damages for personal injuries.” Id. at 276, 105 S.Ct. at 1947. The application of that rule posed no difficulty in Wilson, since the New Mexico statutes there under consideration supplied only one period of limitation for all actions of this kind. As Justice O’Connor correctly observed in her dissenting opinion, however, the Wilson rule provides no clear…