Benson v. Higher Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri et al

Filing 35

ORDER granting 12 Motion for Summary Judgment or in the Alternative to Dismiss. Signed by District Judge Tom S. Lee on 2/6/2024 (CP)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI
NORTHERN DIVISION
JAMERIAL BENSON
VS.

PLAINTIFF
CIVIL ACTION NO.: 3:23-CV-564-TSL-RPM

HIGHER EDUCATION LOAN AUTHORITY
OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI d/b/a
MOHELA; NAVIENT CORPORATION;
CONDUENT EDUCATION SERVICES, LLC
f/k/a ACS EDUCATION SERVICES, INC.

DEFENDANTS

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
This cause is before the court on the motion of defendant
Navient Corporation (Navient) for summary judgment pursuant to
Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Plaintiff

Jamerial Benson has responded to the motion, and the court,
having considered the memoranda of authorities, together with
attachments, submitted by the parties, concludes that the motion
should be granted.
Plaintiff filed his complaint in this cause on March 3,
2023, asserting causes of action for conversion, breach of
fiduciary duty, negligence, breach of contract and breach of the
duty of good faith and fair dealing, all based on allegations
that defendants -- first, Navient, and later, defendant Higher
Education Loan Authority of the State of Missouri d/b/a Moella -

negligently failed to maintain accurate records of his

student loan payments and failed to fully and accurately apply
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his payments to his loan balance.

Plaintiff alleged, for

example, that only six payments were applied to his loan during
the five-year period from 2008 to 2013 despite regular automatic
payments being drafted from his bank account. 1
Navient contends in its motion that it is entitled to
summary judgment because (1) it is not a proper defendant as it
never disbursed or serviced any loans to plaintiff, and (2) even
if were a proper defendant, all plaintiff’s claim against it are
barred by the statute of limitations.

In response to the

motion, plaintiff argues that Navient’s motion should be denied
as premature, because no discovery has been taken and he is
otherwise unable to present, by affidavit or declaration, facts
essential to support his opposition.

More particularly, he

asserts that he needs discovery to determine whether Navient
Corporation is a proper party in interest, including whether
Navient serviced any of his loans during the relevant periods.
Plaintiff does not claim to need discovery, however, in order to
properly respond to Navient’s argument that his claim is timebarred.

Instead, on that issue, he contends the motion should

be denied because there are genuine issues of material fact,

Plaintiff’s complaint was filed in state court but was
removed by defendants, who asserted in the notice of removal
that plaintiff’s discovery responses had disclosed an amount in
controversy in excess of the $75,000 threshold for jurisdiction
based on diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.
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which he is entitled to have resolved by a jury, as to when the
statute of limitations began to run on his claims.

It is clear,

though, that all his claims against Navient are time-barred and
due to be dismissed.
All plaintiff’s claims are governed by Mississippi’s threeyear catch-all statute of limitations.

See Miss. Code Ann. §

15-1-49(1) (“All actions for which no other period of limitation
is prescribed shall be commenced within three (3) years next
after the cause of such action accrued, and not after.”); Am.
Bankers' Ins. Co. of Fla. v. Wells, 819 So. 2d 1196, 1200 (Miss.
2001) (claims for breach of the implied covenant of good faith
and fair dealing and breach of fiduciary duties governed by
three-year statute of limitations in Miss. Code Ann. § 15–1–49);

Alston v. Pope, 112 So. 3d 422, 424 n.3 (Miss. 2013) (same for
negligence claims); White v. White, 355 So. 3d 233, 240 (Miss.
Ct. App. 2022) (same for claims for conversion and breach of
contract).

Generally, “[a] cause of action accrues when it

comes into existence as an enforceable claim, that is, when the
right to sue becomes vested.

In other words, the statute of

limitations begins to run when all the elements of a tort, or
cause of action, are present.”

Weathers v. Metro. Life Ins.

Co., 14 So. 3d 688, 692 (Miss. 2009).

Navient points to

plaintiff’s allegation that Navient serviced his loans only
until the loans were acquired by MOHELA in 2013 and argues that
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consequently, plaintiff’s claims against Navient necessarily
accrued, at the latest, in 2013, since Navient is not alleged to
have had any involvement in servicing the loans after that date. 2
In response, plaintiff argues that his claims for negligence and
breach of fiduciary duty involve “latent” injuries, and as such,
are governed by the “discovery rule” of § 15-1-49(2), which
states, “In actions for which no other period of limitation is
prescribed and which involve latent injury or disease, the cause
of action does not accrue until the plaintiff has discovered, or
by reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury.” 3

He

further argues that while Navient contends the evidence shows
that he was fully aware of the status of his loans well over
three years before he filed suit, the evidence actually shows
that, despite his diligent efforts, he “experienced a years-long
run around that rendered him unable to determine whether his
balance was correct or his payments were properly applied.”
Ultimately, he claims, “[i]t was not until [he] retained an
attorney who requested the needed information that he finally
received a letter from Navient dated August 19, 2022 showing his
complete account declining balance payment history that he had
Navient asserts that MOEHELA took over servicing
plaintiff’s loans in 2008, not 2013, but contends that in either
case, plaintiff’s claims are time-barred.
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Plaintiff does not argue that this “discovery rule” applies
to his other claims and thus appears to have conceded they are
time-barred.
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enough information to know a cause of action against Navient was
appropriate.”

The “declining balance payment history”

accompanying the letter set out the date, type and amount of
each transaction on plaintiff’s account, including the amounts
applied to principal, interest and any fees, and listed the
remaining unpaid principal balance following each transaction.
Plaintiff argues that “[a] jury should decide if and to what
extent pertinent knowledge was withheld from [him] … and
whether, as a result of Navient’s conduct, his injury was
latent, and could not have been discovered until August of
2022.”
“Section 15-1-49(2) applies only to actions that involve a
‘latent injury,’ and it tolls the statute of limitations only
until ‘the plaintiff has discovered, or by reasonable diligence
should have discovered, the injury.’”
(citing § 15-1-49(2)).

White, 355 So. 3d at 241

A latent injury is “one where the

‘plaintiff will be precluded from discovering harm or injury
because of the secretive or inherently undiscoverable nature of
the wrongdoing in question ... [or] when it is unrealistic to
expect a layman to perceive the injury at the time of the
wrongful act.’”

PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc. v. Lowery, 909

So. 2d 47, 50 (Miss. 2005) (quoting Donald v. Amoco Prod. Co.,
735 So. 2d 161, 168 (Miss. 1999)).

See Bennett v. Hill-Boren

P.C., 52 So. 3d 364, 369 (Miss. 2011) (“The discovery rule is
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applied when the facts indicate that it is unrealistic to expect
a layman to perceive the injury at the time of the wrongful
act.”).
While “genuine disputes as to the ability to discover a
latent injury are questions of fact to be decided by the fact
finder, not on summary judgment,” Punzo v. Jackson County, 861
So. 2d 340, 346 (Miss. 2003), here, there is no genuine dispute. 4
Plaintiff claims that in August 2022, he finally had enough
information to know he had a cause of action against Navient
when he received the letter from Navient that included a
declining balance payment history.

However, Navient has

submitted evidence that it provided this exact information to
plaintiff in January 2016.

Specifically, in January 2016,

reportedly in response to a request by plaintiff for
information, Navient sent plaintiff a letter, accompanied by a
document entitled “PRINCIPAL BALANCE PAYMENT HISTORY,” which set
forth, in virtually identical format, the same information in
the declining balance payment history provided to plaintiff in
August 2022.

In an affidavit, plaintiff acknowledges that

around this time, he had requested a payment history from
Navient and that “Navient sent [him] a payment history, but it
did not ... include the entire declining balance history as
The court assumes, solely for the sake of argument, that
plaintiff’s injury could be considered latent.
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requested.”

Yet the payment history which Navient sent to him

in 2016 included the same balance history information as the
payment history provided in August 2022, which plaintiff
concedes was the information he needed to file suit.

As this

information was provided to plaintiff more than seven years
before suit was filed, plaintiff’s claims are clearly timebarred.
For that reason, it is ordered that defendant Navient’s
motion for summary judgment is granted.
SO ORDERED this 6th day of February, 2024.
/s/ Tom S. Lee______________
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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