00-3889 Pitts, et al. v. City of Kankakee, et al.

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“[T]he district court was correct to characterize the Pitts/Lawson complaint as merely a lingering effect of an earlier violation. … [T]he City took only one action for each parcel of land, and each action affected only one person: on particular dates, it posted ‘SLUM PROPERTY’ signs. As of that moment, the plaintiffs knew they had suffered an injury; and nothing new happened thereafter to change the nature of the injury. …”

“We think that the best analogy here, for purposes of deciding when this claim accrued, is to cases in which a single publication defames a person, often over a period of time as copies of that newspaper, or book, or other material, circulate around a community. These kind of claims fall under what is known as the ‘single publication rule,’ recognized both in the Uniform Single Publication Act promulgated by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Law, and in the Restatement (2d) of Torts sec. 577A (1977).”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, McCuskey, J., Wood, J.