PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ...

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F.2d 20. Zeleznik was an action against the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (“INS”) for the wrongful death of the
plaintiffs’ son. The plaintiffs sued the INS when they
discovered, more than two years after their son’s death, that the
INS had released their son’s killer just days before the murder
even though the killer had confessed to the INS that he did not
have an authorized status in the United States, was in fraudulent
possession of a United States passport, and had been involved
in illegal drug sales. Id. at 20-22.
We held in Zeleznik that the FTCA’s two-year statute of
limitations barred the plaintiffs’ claim because it had accrued
when they learned of their son’s death and its immediate cause.
Thus, they were put on notice of the need to investigate their
claim even though at the time of his death they had not learned
of the INS’s involvement. We explained, following the
Supreme Court’s decision in Kubrick, that “the accrual date is
not postponed until the injured party knows every fact necessary
to bring his action.” Id. at 23. Because the plaintiffs knew of
their son’s death and its immediate cause, even though they did
not know of the INS’s involvement, they possessed sufficient
critical facts to investigate their claim, and inasmuch as the INS
did not actively conceal its involvement in the case, the accrual
of the claim was not postponed by reason of the plaintiffs’ lack
of actual notice of that involvement. Id. at 24.
But the issue here is not when Santos’s claim accrued, as
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At oral argument, the Government stated that Zeleznik is our
most directly applicable precedent governing in this case.
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