McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 6 (1993)

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Cite as: 508 U. S. 106 (1993)

Opinion of the Court

cause it was commenced when he lodged his complaint with the District Court on March 6, 1989, or because it should be viewed as having been "instituted" on the date when his administrative claim was denied.

The text of the statute requires rejection of the first possibility. The command that an "action shall not be instituted . . . unless the claimant shall have first presented the claim to the appropriate Federal agency and his claim shall have been finally denied by the agency in writing and sent by certified or registered mail" is unambiguous. We are not free to rewrite the statutory text. As of March 6, 1989, petitioner had neither presented his claim to the Public Health Service, nor had his claim been "finally denied" by that agency. As the Court of Appeals held, petitioner's complaint was filed too early.

The statutory text does not speak with equal clarity to the argument that petitioner's subsequent receipt of a formal denial from the agency might be treated as the event that "instituted" his action. Petitioner argues the word "instituted" that is used in § 2675(a), see n. 1, supra, is not synonymous with the word "begun" in § 2401(b), see n. 4, supra, or with the word "commence" as used in certain other statutes and rules. See, e. g., Hallstrom v. Tillamook County, 493 U. S. 20 (1989). He suggests that an action is not "instituted" until the occurrence of the events that are necessary predicates to the invocation of the court's jurisdiction— namely, the filing of his complaint and the formal denial of the administrative claim. This construction, he argues, is consistent with the underlying purpose of § 2675(a): As long as no substantial progress has been made in the litigation by the time the claimant has exhausted his administrative remedies, the federal agency will have had a fair opportunity to investigate and possibly settle the claim before the par-

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