Title: Tomlinson v. Celotex Corp.
Citation: 244 Kan. 474, 770 P.2d 825
Docket Number: 62,113
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: March 3, 1989

244 Kan. 474 (1989)
770 P.2d 825
RICHARD W. TOMLINSON, Plaintiff,
v.
THE CELOTEX CORPORATION, et al., Defendants.
No. 62,113

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed March 3, 1989.
Dennis J. Dobbels, of Polsinelli, White, Vardeman &amp; Shalton, P.C., of Kansas City, Missouri, argued the cause, and David A. Welte and Paul E. Vardeman, of the same firm, and Joseph R. Colantuono, of the same firm, of Overland Park, were with him on the briefs for defendants The Celotex Corporation, Fibreboard Corporation, GAF Corporation, Keene Corporation, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, Owens-Illinois Corporation, Inc., and Pittsburgh-Corning Corporation.
Bryce A. Abbott and Michael P. Oliver, of Wallace, Saunders, Austin Brown &amp; Enochs, Chartered, of Overland Park, were on the briefs for defendant Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc.
Dan L. Wulz, of Bryan, Lykins, Hejtmanek &amp; Wulz, P.A., of Topeka, argued the cause, and Paul H. Hulsey, of Ness, Motley, Loadholt, Richardson &amp; Poole, P.A., of Charleston, South Carolina, was with him on the brief for plaintiff.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
ALLEGRUCCI, J.:
This case was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas and comes before this court by certification pursuant to the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act, K.S.A. 60-3201 et seq. This court accepted certification, and the question as framed by the certifying order is:
The plaintiff, Richard W. Tomlinson, filed this action on May *475 11, 1987. Based upon theories of strict liability and negligence, plaintiff's suit alleges that he sustained personal injuries through exposure to asbestos manufactured, sold, or distributed by the eight defendants. Defendants named in the suit include The Celotex Corporation, Fibreboard Corporation, GAF Corporation, Keene Corporation, Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation, Owens-Illinois Corporation, Inc., Pittsburgh-Corning Corporation, and Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc.
The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiff's claim was barred by the ten-year limitation contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b). Plaintiff responded that the provisions of K.S.A. 60-513(b) do not apply to claims involving injuries arising from latent diseases, and that any application of the statute to such injuries is unconstitutional. In resolving the certified question, the order from the United States District Court states that "it is assumed that plaintiff's exposure to excessive quantums of asbestos, which gave rise to his cause of action against these defendants, occurred within the years 1965 through 1971. The fact of his asbestos-related injury, i.e., diagnosis, by reason of its latent state, was not reasonably ascertainable until September, 1986."
At the time the plaintiff filed this action, K.S.A. 60-513(b) provided:
In the present case, the plaintiff was last exposed to asbestos products manufactured, sold, or distributed by the defendants in 1971. His injuries due to this exposure, however, did not become reasonably ascertainable until approximately 15 years later. The parties dispute the applicability of the last clause of subsection (b) of K.S.A. 60-513 that "in no event shall the period be extended more than ten (10) years beyond the time of the act giving rise to the cause of action." The plaintiff contends that the ten-year limitation contained in subsection (b) does not apply to asbestos-related injuries or other injuries arising from latent diseases.
*476 The ten-year limitation of K.S.A. 60-513(b) has received only limited attention from this court. Prior to its adoption in 1964, a plaintiff had two years in which to bring a cause of action, measured from the time of the plaintiff's injury. Kitchener v. Williams, 171 Kan. 540, 236 P.2d 64 (1951). In 1964, the legislature retained the old rule in part, but also provided that, where the fact of the plaintiff's injury was not reasonably ascertainable until some time subsequent to the defendant's wrongful act, the limitations period would begin only upon the date the injury became reasonably ascertainable to the plaintiff. The legislature then included, however, the ten-year period as a limitation upon the new discoverability provision. In Hecht v. First National Bank &amp; Trust Co., 208 Kan. 84, 94, 490 P.2d 649 (1971), this court summarized the effect of 60-513(b): "The Kansas provision has an outside limitation of ten years, but otherwise is essentially what has been identified as the `discovery rule.'"
The ten-year limitation contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) received its most important interpretation in Ruthrauff, Administratrix v. Kensinger, 214 Kan. 185, 519 P.2d 661 (1974). In Ruthrauff, the plaintiff's cause of action arose from an explosion and fire which resulted from the alleged negligent construction of a house. The defendants completed construction of the house in 1959. The explosion and fire, however, did not occur until 1970. This court held that the plaintiff, who filed suit within two years of the date of the explosion and fire, was not barred in bringing her action by the ten-year limitation. The ten-year limitation, the court held, applies "only to those cases in which the fact of injury is not reasonably ascertainable until some time after substantial injury occurs." 214 Kan. at 191. The ten-year limitation thus had no application "where the fact of substantial injury is immediately apparent as in the case of an explosion and resulting fire." 214 Kan. at 191.
In reaching this conclusion, the Ruthrauff court first briefly reviewed the rules of statutory construction:
The court then proceeded to apply these rules to the limitation periods contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b):
Therefore, because the substantial injury in Ruthrauff was "immediately ascertainable," the ten-year limitation did not apply and the plaintiff's cause of action was not barred. 214 Kan. at 192.
Although it is not controlling in the present case, it may be noted that the legislature has subsequently acted to reverse the rule in Ruthrauff. In 1987, the legislature amended the last clause of K.S.A. 60-513(b) to provide that "in no event shall an action be commenced more than 10 years beyond the time of the act giving rise to the cause of action." Thus, under the new version of the statute, the ten-year limitation applies to all actions, whether or not the substantial injury was immediately ascertainable. However, the previous rule announced in Ruthrauff continues in effect until July 1, 1989, for those acts giving rise to a cause of action which occurred prior to July 1, 1987. K.S.A. 1988 Supp. 60-513(d). Thus, the rule announced in Ruthrauff remains applicable to the present case.
The defendants contend that the act giving rise to the cause of *478 action is plaintiff's last exposure to and inhalation of the asbestos products. Since the plaintiff's asbestos-related injury is not an injury such as a fire or explosion where the substantial injury is immediately ascertainable, defendants maintain the plaintiff had ten years from last exposure to the asbestos to file his suit. Defendants argue that, since plaintiff was never again exposed to defendants' products after 1971, he would have suffered injury at that time and thereby would have caused the ten-year statute of limitation to start to run. The plaintiff, however, argues that the legislature did not intend to include latent disease claims within the limitations established in K.S.A. 60-513(b).
For support of his argument, the plaintiff relies primarily upon a North Carolina case, Wilder v. Amatex Corp., 314 N.C. 550, 336 S.E.2d 66 (1985). In Wilder, the North Carolina Supreme Court held that N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-15(b) (Interim Supp. 1976, repealed 1979), which included a ten-year maximum limitations period, did not apply to latent disease claims. However, the ruling in Wilder was based upon the unique nature of the North Carolina statute and is not helpful in resolving the correct interpretation of K.S.A. 60-513(b).
In Wilder, the statute at issue applied only to latent injury claims, those causes of action "having as an essential element bodily injury to the person or a defect in or damage to property which originated under circumstances making the injury, defect or damage not readily apparent to the claimant at the time of its origin." N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-15(b). In arriving at its conclusion, the court stated: "We note, importantly, that G.S. 1-15(b) is not intended to be a statute of limitations governing all negligence claims." 314 N.C. at 555. The limitation of the statute to latent injury claims, instead of all personal injury actions, permitted the North Carolina court to hold that the statute had only a narrow application and did not affect the validity of a prior line of North Carolina workers' compensation cases involving latent diseases. The rules announced in the latent disease cases were held to be independent of and unaffected by the ten-year limitation in the latent injury statute. 314 N.C. at 561.
This decision by the Wilder court was due to the narrow scope of the North Carolina statute. Because the statute did not apply to all negligence actions, the North Carolina Supreme Court reasoned that the rules announced in prior latent disease cases were *479 unaffected by the statute, and that the legislature did not intend to apply the ten-year limitation in the statute to such cases. The approach adopted by the Wilder court is not helpful in the present case, since the Kansas statute containing the ten-year limitation applies by its express terms to all negligence actions, including latent disease claims.
The ten-year limitation and the other provisions contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) apply to those causes of action listed in the section. Subsection (a) currently lists seven different types of actions including, under paragraph (4), "[a]n action for injury to the rights of another, not arising on contract, and not herein enumerated." Thus, by its express terms, the statute makes the ten-year limitation provision contained in subsection (b) applicable to all personal injury actions, whether based upon negligence or strict liability. Unlike the North Carolina statute interpreted in Wilder, there is no basis for inferring that the legislature intended to exclude latent diseases from the scope of the statute.
Whether the ten-year limitation contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) applies to the plaintiff's cause of action must be resolved by an analysis of the Kansas statute. As noted in Judge Kelly's order of certification, the federal district court decisions interpreting subsection (b) have yielded different results. The plaintiff, citing Colby v. E.R. Squibb &amp; Sons, Inc., 589 F. Supp. 714 (D. Kan. 1984), argues that the ten-year limitation does not begin until the person bringing the action has received a substantial injury. Thus, he argues that the ten-year limitation did not begin to run upon his last exposure to asbestos in 1971, but upon the diagnosis of his asbestos-related injury in 1986.
The ten-year limitation contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) begins at "the time of the act giving rise to the cause of action." In Colby, this phrase was interpreted to mean the date on which the plaintiff received a substantial injury and not the date of the defendant's action.
Chief Judge Earl E. O'Connor reached a different conclusion in Cowan by Cowan v. Lederle Laboratories, 604 F. Supp. 438 (D. Kan. 1985). In Cowan, the court, citing the analysis of Judge Rogers in Purcell v. Abbott Laboratories, No. 81-4237 (D. Kan., unpublished, June 2, 1982), held that the phrase "the act giving rise to the cause of action" meant the date of the exposure of the *480 injured party to the allegedly harmful substance, and not the date of the subsequent substantial injury.
In Cowan, plaintiffs had brought an action for the physical and mental damages allegedly caused by the discoloration of their daughter's teeth due to her ingestion of tetracycline produced by the defendant. After quoting the earlier interpretation of the statute in Colby, the court stated:
While it is possible to interpret the last clause of subsection (b) in isolation so that the ten-year maximum limitation period does not commence until the time of substantial injury, this interpretation requires separate and different interpretations of the phrase "the act giving rise to the cause of action."
"It is the duty of courts to reconcile various provisions of an act in order to make them consistent, harmonious, and sensible if that can be done without doing violence to plain provisions therein contained." State, ex rel., v. Kalb, 218 Kan. 459, 464, 543 P.2d 872 (1975), modified 219 Kan. 231, 546 P.2d 1406 (1976). The various provisions of a statute should be construed together to result in consistency rather than inconsistency, if it is reasonably possible to so construe them. Terrill v. Hoyt, 149 Kan. 51, 55, 87 P.2d 238 (1939). In the present case, a consistent interpretation of the phrase "the act giving rise to the cause of action," *481 as the phrase is used in the separate clauses of K.S.A. 60-513(b), requires interpreting the phrase to mean the defendant's wrongful act, rather than the occurrence of a substantial injury.
Applying this interpretation to the instant case, we conclude that the ten-year limitation contained in subsection (b) began, at the latest, upon the last exposure of the plaintiff to asbestos produced, sold, and distributed by the defendants in 1971.
The plaintiff makes two additional arguments which should be briefly noted. First, the plaintiff relies upon the holding of this court in Miller v. Beech Aircraft Corporation, 204 Kan. 184, 460 P.2d 535 (1969). In Miller, the court held that a cause of action for damages resulting from a disease "comes into being when the disease and its cause becomes manifest, or is reasonably ascertainable." 204 Kan. at 189. However, in Miller, the plaintiff had filed suit "[a]pproximately twenty-three months" after he withdrew from employment with the defendant and ended his exposure to the dust which was allegedly the source of his emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis. 204 Kan. at 184. Thus, the ten-year limitation contained in the last clause of K.S.A. 60-513(b) was never at issue in the case.
Second, the plaintiff makes an argument relating to K.S.A. 60-3303. This portion of the Kansas Product Liability Act provides for a "[u]seful safe life ten-year period of repose" in products liability cases. Under K.S.A. 60-3303(a), a product seller is generally not liable for the harm caused by the use of a product after the expiration of its useful safe life. The statute also provides that, for products causing harm more than ten years after the time of their delivery, a rebuttable presumption arises that the harm was caused after the expiration of the product's useful safe life. K.S.A. 60-3303(b)(1).
The statute also contains a limitation upon the ten-year rebuttable presumption. Subparagraph (b)(2)(D) of K.S.A. 60-3303 provides:
The plaintiff argues that subparagraph (b)(2)(D) is meaningless if the ten-year limitation period contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) *482 applies to products causing latent injuries. According to the plaintiff's argument, if the ten-year limitation period contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) is deemed to apply to such actions, then K.S.A. 60-3303(b)(2)(D) is unnecessary, since such action would in any case be barred by the statute of limitations. Thus, the plaintiff concludes that K.S.A. 60-3303 demonstrates the legislature's intent to not include cases involving such injuries as asbestosis within the scope of the ten-year limitation of K.S.A. 60-513(b).
We do not agree with plaintiff's conclusion. As we noted earlier, the provisions of K.S.A. 60-513(a)(4) apply to all actions "for injury to the rights of another, not arising on contract, and not herein enumerated." The useful safe life provisions contained in K.S.A. 60-3303 were not adopted until eight years after the enactment of K.S.A. 60-513, and expressly provide: "Nothing contained in subsections (a) and (b) above shall modify the application of K.S.A. 60-513." K.S.A. 60-3303(c).
Finally, the plaintiff contends that the application of the ten-year limitation contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b) to claims involving asbestos-related injuries is unconstitutional and violates the equal protection guarantees of the United States Constitution and the Kansas Constitution, the guarantee of due process of law contained in the Fifth Amendment, and the guarantee of a remedy by due course of law provided by Section 18 of the Kansas Bill of Rights.
Most courts which have addressed the issue of the constitutionality of a ten-year maximum limitation period have upheld the constitutionality of the statute. In Pitts v. Unarco Industries, Inc., 712 F.2d 276 (7th Cir.), cert. denied 464 U.S. 1003 (1983), the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the Indiana statute (Ind. Code § 33-1-1.5-5 [1982]), which provided a general two-year statute of limitations in products liability cases, but limited to ten years after the delivery of the product. The court found that the Indiana statute possesses a rational objective, and rejected the claim of the plaintiff, who suffered from asbestosis, that the statute violated equal protection under the laws and deprived her of property without due process.
The Seventh Circuit reaffirmed its Pitts decision that the Indiana ten-year statute of repose did not violate equal protection *483 guarantees in Braswell v. Flintkote Mines, Ltd., 723 F.2d 527 (7th Cir.1983). In Braswell, which involved another constitutional challenge to the Indiana law by a plaintiff suffering from an asbestos-related injury, the court also held that the statute did not violate due process. 723 F.2d  at 530-31.
Tennessee's ten-year statute of repose in products liability cases (Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-28-103 [1980]) was upheld in Hawkins v. D &amp; J Press Co., Inc., 527 F. Supp. 386 (E.D. Tenn. 1981). A similar decision was reached in Buckner v. GAF Corp. 495 F. Supp. 351 (E.D. Tenn. 1979), in which the court found that Tennessee's ten-year limitation statute "begins to run, at least insofar as these plaintiffs are concerned, from the date on which the asbestos insulation products manufactured and sold by [the defendants] were first purchased for use or consumption." 495 F. Supp.  at 353. Applying its prior decision in Hargraves v. Brackett Stripping Machine Company, 317 F. Supp. 676 (E.D. Tenn. 1970), the court concluded that the application of the ten-year limitation to the plaintiffs' asbestos-related claims was not violative of due process. 495 F. Supp.  at 353.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the North Carolina ten-year statute of limitations period (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-15[b] [Interim Supp. 1976, repealed 1979]). In Barwick v. Celotex Corp., 736 F.2d 946 (4th Cir.1984), the constitutionality of the ten-year limitation period was challenged by a plaintiff allegedly suffering from an asbestos-related injury. The court stated:
The court then concluded that the statute possessed a rational basis and that it did not violate equal protection.
The court also found that the ten-year limitation did not violate *484 Article 1, § 18 of the Constitution of the State of North Carolina which, in part, guarantees to every person "remedy by due course of law." The court found:
In Armstrong v. Cities Service Gas Co., 210 Kan. 298, 312, 502 P.2d 672 (1972), this court discussed the general rules to be considered in the determination of the constitutionality of a statute of limitations:
In Hecht v. First National Bank &amp; Trust Co., 208 Kan. 84, 90, 490 P.2d 649 (1971), this court noted that, even though a statute of limitations may have a harsh impact, the court had long recognized "that limitations are created by statute and are legislative, not judicial acts." And in State v. Bentley, 239 Kan. 334, 339, 721 P.2d 227 (1986), we held that statutes of limitation are measures of public policy and are entirely subject to the will of the legislature. The court has also noted that the opinion of the legislature is entitled to great weight in its determination as to *485 the reasonableness of a time limitation. See Kinyon v. Soldiers' Compensation Board, 118 Kan. 367, 368, 234 Pac. 949 (1925).
In Stephens v. Snyder Clinic Ass'n, 230 Kan. 115, 631 P.2d 222 (1981), this court upheld the constitutionality of K.S.A. 60-513(c). This statute provides for a maximum four-year limitation period in medical malpractice cases, compared to the ten-year maximum limitation period contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b). Applying a rational basis test, the court concluded that the four-year limitation period did not violate equal protection guarantees. This court stated:
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld K.S.A. 60-513(c) against a due process challenge in Brubaker v. Cavanaugh, 741 F.2d 318, 321 (10th Cir.1984).
We find that our decision in Stephens is controlling in the instant case. Although it may be true that many asbestos-related injuries will not manifest themselves until more than ten years *486 after last exposure to asbestos products produced, manufactured, or sold by a defendant, this in itself does not establish the unconstitutionality of the ten-year limitation period contained in K.S.A. 60-513(b). It is equally true that many injuries arising from medical malpractice will fail to manifest themselves within four years after the alleged act of malpractice. For example, many injuries due to medical malpractice, such as injuries arising from mistakenly prescribed drugs, may not arise for many years or may not produce injuries, such as birth defects, until the second generation. This court, however, unequivocally upheld a four-year limitation in Stephens. K.S.A. 60-513(b) provides a maximum limitation period more than twice as long as the one upheld in Stephens. We are cognizant of the harsh effect the application of K.S.A. 60-513(b) has in the instant case, as was Justice Prager (now Chief Justice, retired) in speaking for the majority of the court in Stephens:
We find that K.S.A. 60-513(b) is constitutional as applied to the plaintiff and therefore answer the question certified by the United States District Court in the affirmative.