John R. Sand & Gravel Company v. United States (2007)
- Docket
- 06-1164
- Decided
- 2007-01-01
Summary
Question: Is the six-year statute of limitations in the Tucker Act a jurisdictional requirement? Conclusion: In a seven-member majority opinion written by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the Court upheld the Federal Circuit ruling that the statute of limitations was "jurisdictional," or a predicate for court authority. Breyer referred to roughly five decades of the Court's case law to determine that the doctrine of stare decisis required it to follow the time limit and dismiss John R. Sand's claim. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed separate dissenting opinions, each essentially reading the case law in a different light and determining that it had established a more flexible standard for applying statutes of limitation to suits against the government.