Opinion ID: 6340619
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: wisconsin law

Text: The parties agree that DeLong’s negligence claim is governed by a Wisconsin six-year statute of limitations. See Wis. Stat. §§ 893.52(1), 893.53. Under Wisconsin law: [a] claim for relief accrues when there exists a claim capable of present enforcement, a suable party against whom it may be enforced, and a party who has a present right to enforce it. A tort claim is not capable of present enforcement until the plaintiff has suffered actual damage. Actual damage is harm that has already occurred or is reasonably certain to occur in the future. Actual damage is not the mere possibility of harm. Hennekens v. Hoerl, 465 N.W.2d 812, 815–16 (Wis. 1991) (citation, footnotes, and internal quotation marks omitted). Nominal damages are insufficient. See id. at 816 n.6. On the other hand, it need only be shown that there has been an injury to or loss of a legal interest or right: Monetary loss is not the only form of actual damage. One form of actual damage is injury to a legal interest or loss of a legal right. Injury to a legal interest or loss of a legal right often occurs without a contemporaneous monetary loss. However, we have held that injury to a legal interest or loss of a legal right constitutes actual damage before such an injury or loss produces monetary loss. Id. at 816. Such loss of a legal right could be the loss of the right to rescind a transaction and avoid liability on a promissory note, see id. at 816–17; the loss of the right to a patent, see Boehm v. Wheeler, 223 N.W.2d 536, 541 (Wis. 1974) (“We think that the loss of the right to a patent is the loss of the right to exclude others . . . . The right to exclude others is a valuable right and the loss of it would be an injury 3 Appellate Case: 21-3044 Document: 010110684005 Date Filed: 05/13/2022 Page: 4 which would commence the running of the statute of limitations.”); or a beneficiary’s loss of rights under a trust, see French v. Att’y’s Liab. Assurance Soc’y, 881 N.W.2d 358,  (Wis. Ct. App. 2016) (unpublished) (per curiam) (injury to trust beneficiary because negligently drafted trust documents permitted trustee to engage in conflicts of interest). Merely being aware of a risk, however, is insufficient for accrual. For example, in General Accident Insurance Co. v. Schoendorf & Sorgi, 549 N.W.2d 429, 431 (Wis. 1996), a law firm was sued for negligently drafting a company’s pension plan. The company learned of the problem and asked a second firm to correct the plan, which the second firm failed to undertake. See id. at 430–31. The Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the company suffered harm only when the IRS ultimately disqualified the plan. See id. at 434–35. The court cautioned against a view of “actual damage” that would compel “the premature filing of lawsuits at the first faint scent of potential injury.” Id. at 435 n.13 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Meracle v. Children’s Serv. Soc’y of Wis., 421 N.W.2d 856, 858–59, 858 n.12 (Wis. Ct. App. 1988) (although parents of adopted child had learned that child had 25% risk of having Huntington’s Disease, claim for monetary damages because adoption agency had promised a healthy child did not accrue until child was diagnosed with the disease).