Opinion ID: 1282591
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Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The FELA Statute of Limitations.

Text: Although the Federal Employers' Liability Act does not contain a definition or characterization of occupational disease, from a medical standpoint, an occupational disease is any deviation from or interruption of the normal structure or function of the human body and which is due to factors involved in one's employment. Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary at 481, 490 (27th ed. 1988). According to Professor Arthur Larson, an occupational disease is any disease arising out of exposure to harmful conditions of the employment, when those conditions are present in a peculiar or increased degree by comparison with employment generally. 1B A. Larson, The Law of Workmen's Compensation § 41.00 (1992). The preceding characterization by Larson has been adopted by federal courts to define occupational disease in the absence of a definition expressed in federal statutes. See, Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Commercial Union Ins. Co., 978 F.2d 750 (1st Cir. 1992) (Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act); Gencarelle v. General Dynamics Corp., 892 F.2d 173 (2nd Cir.1989). Therefore, for the purpose of the Federal Employers' Liability Act, an occupational disease is a condition which causes impairment, deviation, or interruption of the normal structure or function of a worker's body and which results from hazards or conditions peculiar to a particular occupation or employment. In Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 93 L.Ed. 1282 (1949), the U.S. Supreme Court first applied the FELA statute of limitation to a case involving an occupational disease. Urie involved a railroad employee who had contracted silicosis from continuous inhalation of silica dust blown into locomotives on which the employee had been working for 28 years. Rejecting the contention that the statute of limitations began to run when Urie first contracted silicosis, the court stated: If Urie were held barred from prosecuting this action because he must be said, as a matter of law, to have contracted silicosis prior to November 25, 1938, it would be clear that the federal legislation afforded Urie only a delusive remedy. It would mean that at some past moment in time, unknown and inherently unknowable even in retrospect, Urie was charged with knowledge of the slow and tragic disintegration of his lungs; under this view Urie's failure to diagnose within the applicable statute of limitations a disease whose symptoms had not yet obtruded on his consciousness would constitute waiver of his right to compensation at the ultimate day of discovery and disability. .... We do not think the humane legislative plan intended such consequences to attach to blameless ignorance.... [C]onsequently the afflicted employee can be held to be `injured' only when the accumulated effects of the deleterious substance manifest themselves.... 337 U.S. at 169-70, 69 S.Ct. at 1024-25 (quoting Associated Indemnity Corp. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 124 Cal. App. 378, 12 P.2d 1075 (1932)). Later in United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 100 S.Ct. 352, 62 L.Ed.2d 259 (1979), a medical malpractice case brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the U.S. Supreme Court elaborated on the rule announced in Urie. In 1968, Kubrick, a veteran, was treated with neomycin at a veteran's hospital for an infection. In 1969, Kubrick's private physician informed him that it was highly possible that the hearing loss was the result of the neomycin treatment. Another of Kubrick's private physicians, in June 1971, told him that neomycin had caused his injury and should not have been administered. In 1972, Kubrick filed suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging that he had been injured by negligent treatment at the VA hospital. A provision of the Federal Tort Claims Act, § 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), bars any tort claim against the United States unless the claim is presented in writing to the appropriate federal agency within two years after such claim accrues. The Court in Kubrick stated: The issue in this case is whether the claim `accrues' within the meaning of the Act when the plaintiff knows both the existence and the cause of his injury or at a later time when he also knows that the acts inflicting the injury may constitute medical malpractice, 444 U.S. at 113, 100 S.Ct. at 355, and then stated: We are unconvinced that for statute of limitations purposes a plaintiff's ignorance of his legal rights and his ignorance of the fact of his injury or its cause should receive identical treatment. That he has been injured in fact may be unknown or unknowable until the injury manifests itself; and the facts about causation may be in the control of the putative defendant, unavailable to the plaintiff or at least very difficult to obtain. The prospect is not so bleak for a plaintiff in possession of the critical facts that he has been hurt and who has inflicted the injury. He is no longer at the mercy of the latter. There are others who can tell him if he has been wronged, and he need only ask. If he does ask and if the defendant has failed to live up to minimum standards of medical proficiency, the odds are that a competent doctor will so inform the plaintiff. 444 U.S. at 122, 100 S.Ct. at 359. The Court concluded: We thus cannot hold that Congress intended that accrual of a claim must await awareness by the plaintiff that his injury was negligently inflicted. A plaintiff such as Kubrick, armed with the facts about the harm done to him, can protect himself by seeking advice in the medical and legal community. To excuse him from promptly doing so by postponing the accrual of his claim would undermine the purpose of the limitations statute, which is to require the reasonably diligent presentation of tort claims against the Government. 444 U.S. at 123, 100 S.Ct. at 360. Urie and Kubrick, when read together, supply a basis for a discovery rule regarding an action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act: Although a claimant may be unaware that a legal wrong has occurred, a negligence cause of action accrues when the claimant has knowledge, or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have known of the critical facts of both an injury and the cause of the injury. Thus, the discovery rule relative to an FELA action was expressed in Fries v. Chicago & Northwestern Transp. Co., 909 F.2d 1092, 1095 (7th Cir.1990): [A] cause of action accrues for statute of limitations purposes when a reasonable person knows or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known of both the injury and its governing cause.... Both components require an objective inquiry into when the plaintiff knew or should have known, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, the essential facts of injury and cause. See, also, Bealer v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 951 F.2d 38 (5th Cir.1991) (a cause of action accrues when a plaintiff knows or should have known that the injury is work-related, i.e., when a plaintiff is aware of the critical facts concerning the injury and its causation); Albert v. Maine Cent. R. Co., 905 F.2d 541 (1st Cir.1990) (the statute of limitations begins to run when an employee becomes aware of the disease and its cause); Townley v. Norfolk & Western Ry. Co., 887 F.2d 498 (4th Cir.1989) (a cause of action for an occupational disease does not accrue when the injury is initially sustained, but, rather, when the plaintiff becomes, or should have become, aware of the injury; generally, this will be when the condition is diagnosed, unless it is shown that the plaintiff should have known at an earlier date that the plaintiff was injured); Kichline v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 800 F.2d 356 (3rd Cir.1986) (the statute of limitations begins to run when a plaintiff possesses sufficient critical facts to put the plaintiff on notice that a wrong has been committed and that an investigation is necessary to determine whether redress is available); Dubose v. Kansas City Southern Ry. Co., 729 F.2d 1026 (5th Cir.1984) (the statute of limitations begins to run when a plaintiff should reasonably have been aware of the critical facts of injury and causation). See, also, Fletcher v. Union Pac. R. Co., 621 F.2d 902, 906 (8th Cir.1980), cert. denied 449 U.S. 1110, 101 S.Ct. 918, 66 L.Ed.2d 839 (1981): In cases involving traumatic injury, when the symptoms are immediately manifested so that the employee is aware of the event causing the injury, the cause of action accrues upon the occurrence of the injury, regardless of whether the full extent of the disability is known at that time.... By the same token, with industrial diseases, where the symptoms are not immediately manifested, the cause of action does not accrue until the employee is aware or should be aware of his condition. Although it is undisputed that Monaghan's tinnitus was medically confirmed in 1984, the testimony establishes that tinnitus or ringing in the ears may occur without a loss of hearing. Tinnitus, as a subjective condition, may occur independently of a noise-induced loss of hearing which is an objectively verifiable physical injury to cochlear cells in the inner ear. Although the separate conditions of tinnitus and noise-induced loss of hearing may exist simultaneously, there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the conditions. Moreover, tinnitus is not a noise-induced loss of hearing, the injury which, according to Dr. Carter, Monaghan suffered as the result of exposure to frequently recurrent loud noise over a protracted period. Therefore, Monaghan's knowledge that he was experiencing tinnitus cannot necessarily be equated with knowledge that he was gradually losing his hearing. In fact, Monaghan testified that he was unaware that he was gradually losing his hearing and that he acquired knowledge of his hearing loss only at the time of his examination by Dr. Carter in 1987. Thus, the evidence in Monaghan's case presented a two-fold question for the jury: When did Monaghan know that he had a hearing loss, or, more important under the circumstances, when, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should Monaghan have known that he had a hearing loss and attempted to identify the cause of that injury? Considering all the evidence, reasonable persons could answer the preceding questions differently on the basis of the evidence. One such permissible answer and conclusion was the jury's determination that Monaghan, sometime after June 13, 1985, and, therefore, within the 3-year period for filing an FELA action, acquired the information necessary for accrual of his cause of action against UP; hence, Monaghan timely filed his negligence action under the Federal Employers' Liability Act.