Title: Van Dam v. Gay
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 091659
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: September 16, 2010

Present: Hassell, C.J., Koontz, Kinser, Goodwyn, Millette, and 
Mims, JJ., and Russell, S.J. 
 
JOSEPHINE VAN DAM 
 
 
 
             OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 091659  
 SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
                                     September 16, 2010 
GORDON B. GAY 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF STAFFORD COUNTY 
John E. Kloch, Judge 
 
 
This appeal presents a question as to the time a right of 
action accrued, and the statute of limitations began to run, 
in an action to recover damages for legal malpractice. 
Facts and Proceedings 
 
The facts are undisputed.  Nicholas J. Van Dam (the 
former husband) and Josephine F. Van Dam (the wife) were 
parties to a divorce suit in 1986.  The wife retained Gordon 
B. Gay, an attorney at law, (the defendant) to represent her 
in the case.  The parties and their attorneys negotiated a 
settlement of the issues in the suit and entered into a 
property settlement agreement, drafted by the defendant, on 
September 30, 1986.  During the marriage, the former husband 
participated in two federal retirement plans, related to his 
military service and civil service employment.  The property 
settlement agreement made only the following reference to 
them:  “The wife shall receive . . . survivor’s benefits from 
the husband’s retirement pay.” 
 
On November 3, 1986, the circuit court entered a final 
decree of divorce, ratifying and incorporating the property 
settlement agreement.  The former husband died on June 22, 
2006.  Immediately thereafter, the wife applied to the 
appropriate federal authorities for survivor’s benefits under 
her former husband’s two retirement plans.  Both claims were 
denied on the ground that the 1986 property settlement 
agreement was insufficient, as a matter of federal law, to 
entitle her to any benefits under either plan. 
 
On January 26, 2009, the wife brought this action to 
recover damages for legal malpractice against the defendant.  
The defendant filed a plea in bar asserting the statute of 
limitations.  The circuit court received briefs, heard 
arguments, and sustained the plea of the statute of 
limitations, dismissing the wife’s complaint with prejudice.  
We awarded the wife an appeal. 
Analysis 
 
Appeal of a decision on a plea in bar of the statute of 
limitations involves a question of law that we review de novo.  
Hilton v. Martin, 275 Va. 176, 180, 654 S.E.2d 572, 574 
(2008).  Because no evidence was presented on the plea in bar, 
we are limited to the facts set forth in the complaint and the 
defendant has the burden of proof on the issue that the 
limitation period had run when the complaint was filed.  
 
2
Schmidt v. Household Fin. Corp., II, 276 Va. 108, 112, 117, 
661 S.E.2d 834, 836, 839 (2008). 
 
The circuit court held that the wife’s cause of action 
accrued in 1986, when the defendant’s alleged malpractice 
occurred, and that the statute of limitations had therefore 
run long before the filing of this action.  The wife contends 
that she suffered no injury resulting from the defendant’s 
malpractice until the date of her former husband’s death on 
June 22, 2006, and that this action thus was timely filed.1 
 
Code § 8.01-230 provides, in pertinent part:  
In every action for which a limitation period is 
prescribed, the right of action shall be deemed to 
accrue and the prescribed limitation period shall 
begin to run from the date . . . when the breach of 
contract occurs in actions ex contractu and not when 
the resulting damage is discovered . . . .”2 
 
 
The terms “right of action” and “cause of action,” 
although sometimes used interchangeably, are not synonymous.  
Stone v. Ethan Allen, Inc., 232 Va. 365, 368, 350 S.E.2d 629, 
                     
1 In Virginia, actions for legal malpractice sound in 
contract and are thus governed by the limitation periods 
prescribed for contract claims.  Oleyar v. Kerr, 217 Va. 88, 
90, 225 S.E.2d 398, 399 (1976).  Those periods are three years 
for breach of an oral contract and five years for breach of a 
written contract. Code § 8.01-246. 
 
2 The Virginia General Assembly has consistently declined 
to adopt a "discovery rule."  See e.g., H.B. 486, Va. Gen. 
Assem. (Reg. Sess. 1994) and H.B. 569, Va. Gen. Assem. (Reg. 
Sess. 1994) (proposals to add discovery rule provision for 
injuries to person or damage to property not enacted). 
 
 
3
631 (1986).  They may accrue simultaneously but that will not 
always be the case.  A right of action cannot arise until a 
cause of action exists because a right of action is a remedial 
right to presently enforce an existing cause of action.  
Shipman v. Kruck, 267 Va. 495, 502, 593 S.E.2d 319, 322 
(2004). 
 
The wife concedes that the accrual of her right of action 
did not await her discovery of the defendant’s malpractice, 
but contends that her cause of action could not have accrued, 
and therefore her right of action did not accrue, until she 
suffered damage arising from the defendant’s malpractice.  
This is so, her argument continues, because injury or damage 
is an essential element of any cause of action.  Her damage 
did not occur, she contends, until the death of her former 
husband in 2006, when her right to survivors’ benefits would 
have arisen but for the defendant’s malpractice.  She contends 
that before her former husband’s death, her right to 
survivors’ benefits would have been purely contingent upon his 
predeceasing her. 
 
We addressed a similar issue in MacLellan v. 
Throckmorton, 235 Va. 341, 367 S.E.2d 720 (1988).  In that 
case, the plaintiff engaged the defendant attorney to 
represent him in a divorce case.  The plaintiff alleged that 
the attorney negotiated a property settlement agreement that 
 
4
the plaintiff signed only because the attorney represented to 
him that its provisions for spousal support could later be 
modified by the court if the plaintiff were to suffer a change 
in his circumstances.  The plaintiff further alleged that this 
representation was erroneous, that he later became disabled 
and unable to work, but found that the agreed provisions for 
spousal support, incorporated into the divorce decree, could 
not be modified.  The plaintiff sued the attorney for 
malpractice and was met by a plea of the statute of 
limitations.  There, we held that the cause of action accrued 
upon the termination of the particular undertaking in which 
the attorney was engaged.  That was the date of entry of the 
final decree of divorce, which occurred more than three years 
before the malpractice action was filed.  Id. at 345, 367 
S.E.2d at 722.  We affirmed the trial court’s judgment 
sustaining the plea of the statute of limitations.  Id. 
 
We reached that result despite the fact that the 
plaintiff did not become aware of the malpractice until after 
the limitation period had run, and even if he had been aware 
of it in time, he would have then been unable to quantify his 
damages with precision.  His injury arising from the 
attorney’s malpractice occurred when the court entered a final 
decree of divorce incorporating a property settlement 
 
5
agreement that, contrary to the attorney’s assurance, was not 
subject to change. 
 
In the present case the wife relies on Rutter v. Woltz, 
Blechman, Woltz & Kelly, P.C., 264 Va. 310, 568 S.E.2d 693 
(2002).  In that case the executor of a decedent’s estate sued 
a law firm for malpractice in preparing testamentary documents 
that incurred tax liabilities that could have been avoided.  
Id. at 312-13, 568 S.E.2d at 694.  The issue in Rutter was not 
the statute of limitations, but rather was whether the cause 
of action arose during the decedent’s lifetime and survived 
her death pursuant to Code § 8.01-25.  Id. at 313, 568 S.E.2d 
at 694-95.  That section limits the survival of actions to 
those that “existed” prior to a decedent’s death.  The 
question was whether the decedent could have maintained the 
malpractice action against the attorney during her lifetime.  
We answered that question in the negative because no cause of 
action existed until some injury or damage was sustained as a 
result of the malpractice.  Since the damage in Rutter was 
limited to the unnecessary taxes and fees that were not 
incurred until after the decedent's death, we held that no 
cause of action existed during her lifetime and thus there was 
no cause of action that could survive her death.  Id. at 314, 
568 S.E.2d at 695.  
 
6
 
The distinction between Rutter and the present case lies 
in the mutability of testamentary dispositions during the 
testator’s lifetime.  A testator may, during his lifetime, 
alter his will or other testamentary papers as he pleases and 
whenever he chooses.  See e.g., Schilling v. Schilling, 280 
Va. 146, 149, 695 S.E.2d 181, 183 (2010) (a will does not 
"take effect until the death of the maker" and "has no life or 
force" while the maker is alive) (quoting Timberlake v. State-
Planters Bank of Commerce & Trusts, 201 Va. 950, 957, 115 
S.E.2d 39, 44 (1960)).  While he lives, no beneficiary has 
anything more than a bare expectancy and no person has 
suffered any injury or damage as a result of his tentative 
dispositions.  Thus the claimant in Rutter could have suffered 
no injury or damage during the decedent's lifetime and there 
was no cause of action that could have survived her death.  In 
the present case, as in MacLellan, the plaintiff suffered a 
legal injury arising out of the defendant’s malpractice when 
the final decree of divorce, incorporating the defective 
property settlement agreement, was entered by the circuit 
court. 
 
The legal injury suffered by the wife in the present case 
in 1986 was not vitiated by the fact that her right to pension 
benefits was contingent upon her surviving her former husband.  
By virtue of the equitable distribution statutes, Code §§ 20-
 
7
107.3(A)(2) and (G), in divorce proceedings all pensions are 
presumed to be marital property in the absence of satisfactory 
evidence that they are separate property and the court may 
direct payment of the marital share of such benefits whether 
they are “vested or nonvested” as they become payable.  In 
Cook v. Cook, 18 Va. App. 726, 446 S.E.2d 894 (1994), the 
Court of Appeals approved an award to a wife of a percentage 
of the marital share of her husband’s military retirement 
benefits as they became payable in the future, despite the 
fact that the husband had, at the time of divorce, nine more 
years to serve in the Air Force before his military pension 
rights would become vested.  Id. at 728-29, 446 S.E.2d at 895. 
 
Some injury or damage, however slight, is essential to a 
cause of action, but it is immaterial that all the damages 
resulting from the injury do not occur at the time of the 
injury.  The running of the limitation period will not be 
tolled by the fact that actual or substantial damages did not 
occur until a later date.  Difficulty in ascertaining the 
existence of a cause of action is similarly irrelevant.  This 
time-honored rule may produce inequities by triggering a 
statute of limitations when the injury or damage is unknown or 
difficult or even incapable of discovery, but we have long 
concluded that it is the role of the General Assembly, not the 
courts, to change a rule of law that has been relied upon by 
 
8
the bench and bar for many years.  Shipman, 267 Va. at 502-03, 
593 S.E.2d at 323; Virginia Military Inst. v. King, 217 Va. 
751, 759, 232 S.E.2d 895, 900 (1977). 
Conclusion 
 
The circuit court correctly held that the wife’s legal 
injury arising out of the defendant’s alleged malpractice 
occurred on November 3, 1986, when the court entered a final 
decree of divorce, terminating the defendant’s employment in 
the matter in which he was engaged.  The wife’s right of 
action accrued on that date and the statute of limitations 
then began to run.  The court did not err in sustaining the 
plea in bar and we will accordingly affirm the judgment. 
Affirmed. 
 
9