Opinion ID: 2325365
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Statutes of Limitations Are Clearly Procedural

Text: In determining whether statutes of limitations are best described as procedural or substantive, the meaning of those terms is instructive. Black's Law Dictionary 1567 (9th ed. 2009) defines substantive law as [t]he part of the law that creates, defines, and regulates the rights, duties, and powers of parties. On the other hand, procedural law is confined to those rules that prescribe the steps for having a right or duty judicially enforced, as opposed to the law that defines the specific rights or duties themselves. Black's Law Dictionary at 1323. Black's quotes John Salmond on the distinctions between the two, saying: So far as the administration of justice is concerned with the application of remedies to violated rights, we may say that the substantive law defines the remedy and the right, while the law of procedure defines the modes and conditions of the application of the one to the other. Black's Law Dictionary at 1567 (quoting John Salmond, Jurisprudence 476 (Glanville L. Williams ed., 10th ed. 1947)). Although its holdings are not controlling on this Court, we are persuaded by the logic of the United States Supreme Court in Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 486 U.S. 717, 108 S.Ct. 2117, 100 L.Ed.2d 743 (1988). In that case, the Court discussed whether the United States Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause allowed states to employ their own choice of law rules to determine whether the forum state's or the claim state's statute of limitations applied in a given case. Id. at 722-30, 108 S.Ct. 2117. Justice Scalia, writing for the Court in Sun Oil Co., commented that viewing statutes of limitations as procedural (rather than as substantive) predates the Constitution itself. Id. at 723, 108 S.Ct. 2117. The historical record shows conclusively, we think, that the society which adopted the Constitution did not regard statutes of limitations as substantive provisions, akin to the rules governing the validity and effect of contracts, but rather as procedural restrictions fashioned by each jurisdiction for its own courts. As Chancellor Kent explained in his landmark work, 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 462-463 (2d ed. 1832): `The period sufficient to constitute a bar to the litigation of sta[l]e demands, is a question of municipal policy and regulation, and one which belongs to the discretion of every government, consulting its own interest and convenience.' Sun Oil Co., 486 U.S. at 726, 108 S.Ct. 2117. In Sun Oil, the Court determined that if statutes of limitations were understood to be procedural, then the forum state could apply its own statute of limitations. In the course of that analysis the Court opined: Since the procedural rules of its courts are surely matters on which a State is competent to legislate, it follows that a State may apply its own procedural rules to actions litigated in its courts. The issue    can be characterized as whether a statute of limitations may be considered as a procedural matter for purposes of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. [33] Id. at 722-23, 108 S.Ct. 2117. The Court went on to state: [The] view of statutes of limitations as procedural for purposes of choice of law followed quite logically from the manner in which they were treated for domestic-law purposes. At the time the Constitution was adopted the rule was already well established that suit would lie upon a promise to repay a debt barred by the statute of limitationson the theory, as expressed by many courts, that the debt constitutes consideration for the promise, since the bar of the statute does not extinguish the underlying right but merely causes the remedy to be withheld. Id. at 725, 108 S.Ct. 2117. In concluding that forum states were not required to apply the statute of limitations of claim states, the Court reasoned that because the statute of limitations does not extinguish the underlying right but merely causes the remedy to be withheld, it is procedural in nature. Id. at 725, 108 S.Ct. 2117 (citing Little v. Blunt, 26 Mass. 488, 492 (1830) and Wetzell v. Bussard, 24 U.S. (11 Wheat.) 309, 311, 6 L.Ed. 481 (1826)). The Court went on to discuss Graves v. Graves' Executors, 5 Ky. 207, 208-09 (1810), which held that [t]he statute of limitations    does not destroy the right but withholds the remedy. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the lex fori, and not the lex loci was to prevail with respect to the time when the action should be commenced. [34] Thus, American jurisprudence long has understood that statutes of limitations are best categorized as procedural in nature.