Opinion ID: 2318796
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Contract Breach, Violation of Fiduciary Duties, Bad Faith, and Fraud Claims

Text: Martin also asserted breach-of-contract, bad faith, violation of fiduciary duty, and fraud claims. The statute of limitations for such claims, she alleges, is ten years. She argues that defendants breached their agreement to mediate her claims against Howard and violated the fiduciary duties that they owed to her as a parishioner. She also alleges that because the church defendants misrepresented the church's mediation process, and did so in bad faith, they should be equitably estopped from invoking the personal-injury statute of limitations to dismiss her cause of action. Before we address Martin's statute of limitations and estoppel theories, the threshold issue for us to resolve is whether, based on the face of the complaint, an enforceable contract to mediate ever existed. In Solomon v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co., 685 A.2d 1073, 1074 n. 2 (R.I.1996) (mem.), we held that an unwritten agreement to mediate a claim could not be enforced by bringing an action for damages. In doing so, we relied by analogy upon G.L.1956 § 10-3-2 (requiring arbitration agreements to be in writing to be enforceable). Although Martin's counsel has suggested in argument that a document may exist that evidences the agreed-upon terms of the mediation, no averment in the complaint described or alluded to any such signed document. Nor was there any averment that Martin had been contemplating suit but that the church defendants specifically promised her that mediation would obviate or render moot any need for her to resort to litigation. In any event, the breach of an alleged agreement to mediate  even if it were in writing  fails to state a claim for which damage relief can be granted. See Solomon, 685 A.2d at 1074 (holding that the only recourse would be to petition the Superior Court for an order to enforce the terms of the agreement). Moreover, in Commerce Oil Refining Corp. v. Miner, 98 R.I. 14, 199 A.2d 606 (1964), this Court construed the scope of the phrase injuries to the person within the context of the § 9-1-14(b) statute of limitations for personal-injury suits to include within that period of limitation actions brought for injuries resulting from invasions of rights that inhere in man as a rational being, that is, rights to which one is entitled by reason of being a person in the eyes of the law. Such rights, of course, are to be distinguished from those which accrue to an individual by reason of some peculiar status or by virtue of an interest created by contract or property.  Miner, 98 R.I. at 20-21, 199 A.2d at 610. (Emphasis added.) Martin's complaint described her injuries as severe emotional distress, anxiety, depression, humiliation, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, and related medical and counseling expenses  all allegedly suffered because of Howard's unwelcome sexual conduct. These wrongs all were alleged personal injuries that would be compensable only if defendants had violated her right to be free from undesired sexual contacts and advances, a right she was entitled to enjoy by reason of being a person in the eyes of the law, rather than by reason of an interest created by contract. Id. Therefore, notwithstanding Martin's attempts to create a contract out of defendants' alleged promise to mediate her personal-injury claims, such an alleged contract wholly derived from and depended upon the prior existence of the personal-injury claims themselves. In addition, the asserted breach of this contract generated no new or different injuries other than the personal injuries for which Martin already was seeking damages. The same is also true for her bad faith, fraud, and violation-of-fiduciary-duty claims. In these circumstances, when the only injuries alleged are those to the plaintiff's person, § 9-1-14(b) applies and Martin's derivative breach-of-contract, bad faith, fraud, and fiduciary-duty claims are time-barred. We also are not persuaded that the complaint described a situation in which defendants gulled Martin into legal inaction, such that they should be equitably estopped from invoking the personal-injury statute of limitations to bar her claims. [3] Although the maxim that no man may take advantage of his own wrong    has frequently been employed to bar inequitable reliance on statutes of limitations, Allan E. Korpella, Fraud, Misrepresentation, or Deception as Estopping Reliance on Statute of Limitations, 43 A.L.R.3d 429, § 3 (1972) (quoting Glus v. Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, 359 U.S. 231, 79 S.Ct. 760, 3 L.Ed.2d 770 (1959)), the plaintiff's reliance on the defendant's conduct must be reasonable, and there must be some form of affirmative deception by the defendant. Id. (citing Snortland v. State, 615 N.W. 2d 574 (N.D.2000) and quoting Narum v. Faxx Foods, Inc., 590 N.W. 2d 454 (N.D.1999)). Martin did not aver that any defendants affirmatively had promised to settle her claims via mediation to lull her into a reasonable belief that her claims would be resolved without suit. Furthermore, Martin failed to allege that any such promises were made to her within three years of the filing of her complaint. Indeed, Martin's complaint revealed that, as of May 30, 1995, she had been apprised of the results of the internal mediation process, yet she failed to file her complaint until after the personal-injury statute of limitations had expired more than three years later. [4] Finally, even if Martin had filed her complaint before the three-year statute of limitations had elapsed, it is unlikely that the Superior Court would have been able to review and adjudicate the defendants' alleged failure to conduct an internal church mediation in a fair, impartial, and confidential manner, as allegedly promised. Such a judicial inquiry inevitably would entangle the courts in interpreting, enforcing, or overruling church doctrine, thereby offending the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as our own state constitutional guaranty of full liberty in religious concernments. R.I. Const. art. 1, sec. 3. In Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the United States of America and Canada v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976), the United States Supreme Court determined that a civil court must accept the ecclesiastical decisions of church tribunals because such rulings were not appropriate matters for judicial review. The Court went on to say there is no dispute that questions of church discipline and the composition of the church hierarchy are at the core of ecclesiastical concern    . Id. at 717, 96 S.Ct. at 2384, 49 L.Ed.2d at 169. Under similar circumstances, in Burgess v. Rock Creek Baptist Church, 734 F.Supp. 30, 30-31 (D.D.C.1990), a former church member brought suit against the church for damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress in terminating her church membership and in treating her as a nonmember. The court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, and held that the dispute about the church official's termination of the plaintiff's church membership was a matter of ecclesiastical cognizance that the court could not adjudicate without offending the separation of church and state compelled by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. at 31. Here, as alleged in this complaint, the internal mediation process of the church defendants involved a religious disciplinary proceeding that was a matter of ecclesiastical cognizance. For the courts in this jurisdiction to question such a proceeding on judicial review, much less to consider overturning its protocols and processes as somehow violating Martin's secular rights, would be to interfere unduly with the defendants' full liberty in religious concernments that is protected under article 1, section 3 of the Rhode Island Constitution. We decline to do so.