Opinion ID: 1934304
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prejudice to Dr. Compton; Burden on the Court.

Text: If the present controversy were to go to trial, Dr. Compton would be compelled to defend himself against allegations relating to his conduct twenty-five to forty years ago. In his brief, he argues that it would be unreasonable to require him to do so: Because time erases evidence, it becomes at some juncture fundamentally unfair to require a defendant to respond to allegations so stale that he cannot possibly marshal an effective defense to them. Statutes of limitations do, after all, exist for a purpose. As the Supreme Court has emphasized, limitations statutes have been enacted by legislatures precisely to protect defendants and the courts from having to deal with cases in which the search for truth may be seriously impaired by the loss of evidence, whether by death or the disappearance of witnesses, fading memories, disappearance of documents, or otherwise. United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 117 [100 S.Ct. 352, 356, 62 L.Ed.2d 259] (1979). In Tyson, 727 P.2d at 228-30, a sharply divided Supreme Court of Washington, holding by a vote of 5:4 that the discovery rule does not apply to an intentional tort claim where the plaintiff has blocked the incident from her conscious memory during the period of the statute of limitations, id. 727 P.2d at 230, also described the prejudice which it thought a contrary rule would generate: As time passes, evidence becomes less available. For example, the defendant might have had a critical alibi witness, only to find that the witness has died or cannot be located by the time the action is brought. Likewise, witnesses who observed the plaintiff's behavior shortly after the alleged act may no longer be available. Physical evidence is also more likely to be lost when a claim is stale, either because it has been misplaced or because its significance was not comprehended at the time of the alleged wrong. In addition, the evidence, which is available becomes less trustworthy as witnesses' memories fade or are colored by intervening events and experiences. Old claims also are more likely to be spurious than new ones. With the passing of time, minor grievances may fade away, but they may grow to outlandish proportions, too. Thus, stale claims present major evidentiary problems which can seriously undermine the courts' ability to determine the facts. By precluding stale claims, statutes of limitation increase the likelihood that courts will resolve factual issues fairly and accurately. Id. 727 P.2d at 228 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). [10] Dr. Compton contends that these considerations are especially troubling in this case because of the alleged absence, in the district judge's words, of a perceptible or palpable injury, the existence of which a trier of fact can independently and objectively verify at time of trial. Farris I, 802 F.Supp. at 489. To permit a plaintiff to avoid the statute of limitations by asserting that she has repressed her recollection of the alleged abusea claim which is easy to fabricate [11] but difficult or impossible to verifymight require the defendant to go to trial with his ability to defend himself severely curtailed, if not completely eviscerated, by the passage of time. These arguments are plausible, but they do not necessarily carry the day. Although the time between the alleged abuse and the institution of suit in this case has been unusually long, the fundamental complaint of lost witnesses and impaired memories is common to all cases in which the running of the statute of limitations has been deferred or interrupted. In each case, considerations of staleness have been trumped by the unfairness of requiring plaintiffs to sue at a time when, through no fault of their own, the injury was not apparent and they could not reasonably have known about it. The present case might profitably be compared with a hypothetical one. Suppose that the defendant threw acid in a plaintiff's face and blinded her. As a result of her blindness, which was caused by the defendant, the plaintiff has become disabled from making an identification, and no other evidence is available. Twenty-five years later, however, a new procedure restores the plaintiff's 20:20 eyesight. She identifies the defendant as her assailant from a photograph taken of the defendant on the day of the assault. To apply the statute of limitations against the plaintiff in such a case to defeat recovery would surely be intolerable, for to do so would permit the assailant to profit from his own wrong. Glus, 359 U.S. at 232-33, 79 S.Ct. at 761-62. [12] We stated in Ehrenhaft that limitations periods find their justification in necessity and convenience rather than in logic.... Their shelter has never been regarded as what now is called a `fundamental' right or what used to be called a `natural' right of the individual. Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 314 [65 S.Ct. 1137, 1142, 89 L.Ed. 1628] (1945). Accepting the pragmatic purposes served by these statutes, we nonetheless are of the view that the added burden imposed upon a defendant to defend against an old claim due to application of the discovery rule is not unreasonable. This determination favors a plaintiff's interest in compensation but is somewhat tempered by the fact that the burden of proof remains upon the plaintiff. Id., 483 A.2d at 1202. Although the alleged wrongful conduct in this case is not merely old but very old indeed, we believe that the reasoning of the court in Ehrenhaft is nevertheless instructive for present purposes. See also McCollum v. D'Arcy, 138 N.H. 285, 638 A.2d 797, 799 (1994), in which the discovery rule was applied after an even longer lapse of time.