Opinion ID: 1983858
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Statutes of Limitation for Products Liability Actions.

Text: [1] The constitutional challenges in these cases focus principally upon the twelve-year statute of repose in RSA 507-D:2, II(a) (Supp. 1979) and the three-year limitation provision of RSA 507-D:2, I (Supp. 1979). Generally, both federal and State courts recognize the power of legislative bodies to enact statutes of limitation which prescribe a reasonable time within which a party is permitted to bring suit for the recovery of his rights. The United States Supreme Court has stated: It may be properly conceded that all statutes of limitation must proceed on the idea that the party has full opportunity afforded him to try his right in the courts. A statute could not bar the existing rights of claimants without affording this opportunity; if it should do so, it would not be a statute of limitations, but an unlawful attempt to extinguish rights arbitrarily, whatever might be the purport of its provisions. Wilson v. Iseminger, 185 U.S. 55, 62 (1902). The concept of allowing a reasonable period of time for suit to be brought after the cause of action arises is not new in our law, for along with substantive rights, the first settlers brought over the incidental rights of adequate remedy and convenient procedure. State v. Saunders, 66 N.H. 39, 74, 25 A. 588, 589 (1889). Thus, the right to an adequate remedy [exists] for the infringement of a right derived from the unwritten law. Id., 25 A. at 589. When it came time to establish a post-revolution form of government, the first part of our Constitution was devoted to chronicling our inherent rights. Part one, article fourteen of the New Hampshire Constitution provides: Every subject of this state is entitled to a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries he may receive in his person, property, or character; to obtain right and justice freely, without being obliged to purchase it; completely, and without any denial; promptly, and without delay; conformably to the laws. (Emphasis added.) [2, 3] In an effort to facilitate the vindication of tort victims' rights, legislatures and courts have developed the discovery rule, under which a cause of action does not accrue until the plaintiff discovers or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have discovered both the fact of his injury and the cause thereof. Raymond v. Eli Lilly & Co., 117 N.H. 164, 171, 371 A.2d 170, 174 (1977); see United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 117-25 (1979). The rule is premised on the manifest unfairness of foreclosing an injured person's cause of action before he has had even a reasonable opportunity to discover its existence. Brown v. Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hosp., 117 N.H. 739, 741-42, 378 A.2d 1138, 1139-40 (1977). [4] Although the legislature's power is broad in determining how long a plaintiff may have to initiate a cause of action and when that limitation period begins to run, this power may not be exercised in an unconstitutional manner. In Carson v. Maurer, 120 N.H. 925, 424 A.2d 825 (1980), we held that, although not a fundamental right, the right to recover for personal injuries is ... an important substantive right. Id. at 931-32, 424 A.2d at 830. Thus, the classifications there at issue were required to be reasonable and to rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation .... Id. at 932, 424 A.2d at 831. In Carson, we ruled that the legislature's extension of the discovery rule to some medical injury plaintiffs, while denying its applicability to others, constituted an impermissible discrimination between classes of plaintiffs. We therefore held that RSA chapter 507-C (Supp. 1979) violated the equal protection provisions of our Constitution to the extent that it limited application of the rule to only a narrow class of medical-malpractice plaintiffs. Id. at 936, 424 A.2d at 833. More recently, in Henderson Clay Products, Inc. v. Edgar Wood & Associates, Inc., 122 N.H. 800, 451 A.2d 174 (1982), we struck down RSA 508:4-b insofar as it precluded application of the discovery rule against architects, but allowed its application against materialmen and suppliers of labor. Relying upon Carson, we concluded: It is difficult to rationally permit a situation to exist whereby the supplier of labor and material has a liability exposure for a period of six years after the injury has been discovered or, in the exercise of due care, should have been discovered when, at the same time, the designers of the premises can be immunized from the liability before the cause of action even accrues or can be factually asserted. Id. at 801-02, 451 A.2d at 175; see 26 ATLA L. REP. 152-53 (1983). [5] Here, too, our standard of review is whether the statute-of-limitations provisions contained in RSA 507-D:2 (Supp. 1979) are reasonable and are substantially related to the legislative objective of reducing products liability insurance rates. [6] RSA 507-D:2, II(a) (Supp. 1979), the twelve-year statute of repose, requires a products liability action to be brought not later than 12 years after the manufacturer of the final product parted with its possession and control or sold it, whichever occurred last. The effect of this absolute limitation on suits against manufacturers is to nullify some causes of action before they even arise. As compared with non-products liability causes of action, which generally must be brought within six years after they accrue, whenever that may be, see RSA 508:4 (Supp. 1981), we hold that the twelve-year bar imposed by RSA 507-D:2, II(a) (Supp. 1979) is neither reasonable nor substantially related to the object of the legislation. [7, 8] The twelve-year limit is unreasonable because the mere purchase of pills produced by a drug manufacturer in California, or of a defective automobile made in Michigan, does not place the consumer on notice of a hidden defect injurious to his health or safety. When product defects lead to injury, our law has long provided for recovery without regard to when the substance or object was made or placed into the national or international stream of commerce. This is particularly important in cases where the injuries may not clearly manifest themselves until years later, such as the clear-cell adenocarcinomas found in the daughters of mothers who twenty or more years previously took a female estrogen pill commonly known as DES (diethylstilbestrol). See, e.g., Bichler v. Eli Lilly and Co., 55 N.Y.2d 571, 577-78, 436 N.E.2d 182, 184, 450 N.Y.S.2d 776, 778 (1982). The unreasonableness inherent in a statute which eliminates a plaintiff's cause of action before the wrong may reasonably be discovered was noted by Judge Frank in his dissent in Dincher v. Marlin Firearms Co., 198 F.2d 821, 823 (2d Cir. 1952), in which he condemned the Alice in Wonderland effect of such a result: Except in topsy-turvy land, you can't die before you are conceived, or be divorced before ever you marry, or harvest a crop never planted, or burn down a house never built, or miss a train running on a non-existent railroad. For substantially similar reasons, it has always heretofore been accepted, as a sort of logical `axiom,' that a statute of limitations does not begin to run against a cause of action before that cause of action exists, i.e., before a judicial remedy is available to a plaintiff. (Footnotes omitted.) [9, 10] Nor do we think that the twelve-year statute of repose is substantially related to a legitimate legislative object. As previously noted, the crisis in products liability insurance had abated nationwide independent of RSA chapter 507-D (Supp. 1979). Nonetheless, persons injured by defective products are deprived arbitrarily of a right to sue the manufacturers responsible for those defective products by virtue of a statute that has become entirely divorced from its underlying purpose. Cf. Boucher v. Sayeed, 459 A.2d 87, 92-93 (R.I. 1983) (medical malpractice crisis existing at time of enactment but not at time of suit was insufficient basis to uphold statute against equal protection challenge). We do not believe that the legislature may constitutionally bar suits against manufacturers by products liability plaintiffs, as a class, twelve years after the manufacturer sold or parted with control of the product, while allowing other plaintiffs to recover for personal injuries not related to a defective product, at any time within six years after the cause of action accrues. Our sister States of Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina have come to the same conclusion under provisions of their State Constitutions similar to part I, article 14 of our Constitution. Lankford v. Sullivan, Long & Hagerty, 416 So. 2d 996, 1003-04 (Ala. 1982) (ten-year statute void under ALA. CONST. art. I, § 13); Battilla v. Allis Chalmers Mfg. Co., 392 So. 2d 874, 874 (Fla. 1980) (relying upon Overland Const. Co., Inc. v. Sirmons, 369 So. 2d 572 (Fla. 1979)) (twelve-year statute void under FLA. CONST. art. I, § 21); Bolick v. American Barmag Corp., 54 N.C. App. 589, 592-95, 284 S.E.2d 188, 191-92 (1981), modified and aff'd, 306 N.C. 364, 293 S.E.2d 415 (1982) (six-year statute void under N.C. CONST. art. I, § 18). See generally Birnbaum,  First Breath's Last Gasp: The Discovery Rule in Products Liability Cases, 13 FORUM 279 (1977); Massery, Date-of-Sale Statutes of LimitationA New Immunity for Product Suppliers, 1977 INS. L.J. 535; Phillips, An Analysis of Proposed Reform of Products Liability Statutes of Limitations, 56 N.C.L. REV. 663 (1978); Note, The Utah Product Liability Limitation of Action: An Unfair Resolution of Competing Concerns, 1979 UTAH L. REV. 149. The plaintiffs also challenge the three-year statute of limitations established in RSA 507-D:2, I (Supp. 1979). This three-year period begins to run from the time the injury is, or should, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, have been discovered by the plaintiff. As previously mentioned, personal actions generally must be brought within six years of the time they accrue, with the exception of libel or slander actions, to which a three-year limit applies. RSA 508:4 (Supp. 1981). We do not think that merely because a manufactured product causes the injury, or because the cause of action is legislatively defined as a product liability action, see RSA 507-D:1, I (Supp. 1979), a plaintiff's injury is therefore different from any other injury. For instance, in the context of an automobile collision case, it makes no sense to say that for that part of an injury caused by another driver's alleged negligence a six-year statute applies, while a product defect that may have been a factor in causing the harm to the plaintiff is subject to a three-year statute. Libel and slander were and are separate common-law torts which may reasonably be distinguished for statute of limitations purposes; however, there is no tort called products liability. [11, 12] For the reasons stated in our analysis of the twelve-year statute of repose, we hold that RSA 507-D:2, I (Supp. 1979) also denies products liability plaintiffs equal protection of the laws. This is not to say that the legislature could not constitutionally establish a statute of limitations of three years for all personal injury actions if it so desired. However, it may not constitutionally discriminate against one class of plaintiffs for the purpose of protecting manufacturers by means of a statute of limitations which is neither reasonable nor substantially related to a legitimate legislative object. [13] The last statute-of-limitations provision under attack in these cases, RSA 507-D:2, III (Supp. 1979), requires third-party claims in products liability cases to be initiated within ninety days of the end of the time periods set forth in paragraphs I and II of that section. To the extent that the statute of limitations for third-party actions is dependent upon RSA 507-D:2, I and II(a) (Supp. 1979), which we have already ruled invalid, we further hold that RSA 507-D: 2, III (Supp. 1979) is unconstitutional. [14] Although the validity of the remaining provisions of RSA 507-D:2 (Supp. 1979) has not been questioned in the cases before us, these provisions would appear to be subject to the same constitutional infirmity as the provisions actually challenged on appeal. Nor are the provisions of the section severable from one another, due to their interrelationship. Accordingly, we must void RSA 507-D:2 (Supp. 1979) in its entirety.