Court Opinion

ID: 9470632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:11:28.815404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:01.213671
License: Public Domain

HARRISON L. WINTER, Chief Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree with what the majority has written regarding the untimeliness of five of Large’s personal injury claims,1 and so I concur in affirming the district court’s summary judgment for defendants as to them. Large’s other cause of action, however, alleges a “continuing wrong” in the form of a negligent failure to warn, a breach of duty which, I conclude, is deemed under Virginia law to be ongoing until the plaintiff’s last exposure to the alleged harm. Under the standards set forth in the Virginia cases, then, the three essential elements of Large’s cause of action for failure to warn were not present until within two years of suit, i.e., when Large resigned and his exposure to the hazards ceased. I therefore dissent from the majority’s failure to differentiate this count from the other causes of action that are time-barred, and would reverse the summary judgment for defendants on it.
I.
Virginia has long recognized that certain kinds of tortious conduct are best classified as involving “continuing wrongs.” See, e.g., Wilson v. Miller, 104 Va. 446, 51 S.E. 837 (1905). Among such wrongs is the negligent failure to warn of a product’s dangers. As the district judge here has previously described Virginia law in such a case:
In alleging negligence based upon a failure to warn, the plaintiffs are in effect alleging that the defendant [manufacturer] was under a duty to warn them of the harmful effects of “Picrin” [a spot removing chemical they had used in their work], and was negligent in failing to do so. Such a duty would be a continuing duty, and negligence in failing to carry out that duty would be continuing negligence.
Tyler v. Street & Co., 322 F.Supp. 541, 544 (E.D.Va.1971); see also City of Richmond v. James, 170 Va. 553, 197 S.E. 416, 419-22 (1938); cf. Featherall v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 219 Va. 949, 252 S.E.2d 358, 366-67, 369 (1979). It follows that Large’s allegation of the manufacturers’ negligent failure to warn of the possible deleterious consequences of their product falls well within the “continuing wrong” category of torts.
The significance of an allegation that defendants are guilty of a continuing wrong is that the breach of duty is dated from the plaintiff’s last exposure to the hazardous condition or wrongful conduct.2 Thus, in Richmond v. James, supra, the Virginia Supreme Court held that a city’s failure either to correct a leak in a gas pipe it had installed or to terminate supplying gas to the *100endangered customer constituted “continuing negligence”, and therefore was actionable beyond the time that suit would have been barred had the breach of duty been dated from the time of the original negligence in construction of the pipeline, or even from the first manifestation of physical harm to the customer. More recently, in Farley v. Goode, 219 Va. 969, 252 S.E.2d 594, 599 (1979), the Virginia Supreme Court rejected that defendant’s contention that prior cases3 required the dating of accrual from the first instance of negligent treatment of a patient by a dentist, explaining:
In each of those cases the cause of action stemmed from a single, isolated non-continuing wrongful act. Here, the right of action arose from a continuous tort in which the negligent failure to diagnose properly resulted in omission to perform or recommend necessary treatment.
The Farley court dated accrual as of the cessation of the course of continuing wrong rather than its beginning, as have many similar “last exposure” holdings.4 See Wilson v. Miller, supra; McCormick v. Romans & Gunn, 214 Va. 144, 198 S.E.2d 651, 654-55 (1973); Fenton v. Danaceau, 220 Va. 1, 255 S.E.2d 349 (1979) (per curiam); Tyler, supra; cf. Boains v. Lasar Manufacturing Co., Inc., 330 F.Supp. 1134, 1136 (D.Conn.1971) (construing a limitations statute similar to Virginia’s in a negligent failure to warn case such that “ ‘the statute does not begin to run until that course of conduct is completed.’ ”); Rowe v. Gatke Corp., 126 F.2d 61, 66 (7 Cir.1942) (under Indiana law, action stemming from workplace exposure to asbestos does not accrue until “last exposure”, i.e., termination of employment); Simmons v. American Mut. Liability Ins. Co., 433 F.Supp. 747, 751 (S.D.Ala.1976), aff’d, 560 F.2d 1022 (5 Cir.1977) (action alleging silicosis injuries stemming from unsafe workplace does not accrue in Alabama until “the last date of employment in the type of work causing the injury.”); Armour & Company, Inc. v. Mitchell, 262 F.2d 580 (6 Cir.1958) (Tennessee law).
Yet in purporting to apply the recent statement of Virginia’s law of accrual found in Locke v. Johns-Manville Corp., 221 Va. 951, 275 S.E.2d 900, 905 (1981), the majority ignores the full test stated there, and thus overlooks the significance of the continuing tort allegation. Locke stated plainly:
There is no right of action until there is a cause of action. Caudill v. Wise Rambler, 210 Va. 11, 13, 168 S.E.2d 257, 259 (1969). The essential elements of a cause of action, whether based on a tortious act or breach of contract, are (1) a legal obligation of a defendant to the plaintiff, (2) a violation or breach of that duty or right, and (3) harm or damage to the plaintiff as a proximate consequence of the violation or breach. Id. See Sides v. Richard Machine Works, Inc., 406 F.2d 445, 446 (4th Cir.1969). A cause of action does not evolve unless all of these factors are present.
(emphasis added). For all three factors to be present, it is not enough — as the majority would suggest — only that identifiable injury have occurred; where the breach of duty alleged is one of a continuing nature, that second element is not present until the wrongful conduct finally ceases.
II.
Because it involves a similar occupational disease, Locke, which dated accrual of the cause of action in that case from the time of injury, superficially appears to support *101the majority’s holding. On close analysis, I do not think that Locke controls. Locke involved a worker who, after several decades of workplace exposure to asbestos, finally retired in 1972. Because the worker did not bring suit until 1978, however, the only unripened element of a cause of action possible was the emergence of actual injury after retirement, i.e., after the “last exposure”. Locke offered no occasion to be concerned with when a breach of duty occurred; it was concerned with when harm resulted. Therefore, I do not think that Locke can be read in the negative to hold that the time of injury signals accrual even where injury arises before the ongoing breach of duty ceases.
The district court, whose analysis is adopted by the majority, erroneously suggests that Street v. Consumers Mining Corp., 185 Va. 561, 39 S.E.2d 271 (1946) also prescribes the first manifestation of injury as the accrual date for a cause of action no matter what the nature of the duty which was breached. The worker in Street had retired in 1936, by which time his pulmonary injuries had already set in. Unlike Large, but like Locke, the plaintiff in Street did not sue within two years of last exposure, but rather waited until 1944 to file. By then, all three elements of his cause of action had long since been present. Therefore neither Locke nor Street rescind the “continuing tort” line of cases applicable here.5
III.
To my mind, the fact that only two weeks of allegedly wrongful conduct occurred within the two-year limitations period is irrelevant to a determination that identifiable injury had occurred earlier. If, under Virginia law, the first occurrence of physical injury signalled' accrual in all circumstances, neither the Farley nor Fenton holdings noted above were possible. In Farley, for example, injury to the plaintiff-patient’s gums due to the defendant-dentist’s failure to diagnose periodontal disease began as early as 1971. 252 S.E.2d at 596. Certainly this was more than “slight” actual injury, see Caudill, supra, as the negligent failure to diagnose resulted in the difference between $700 worth of curative treatment had such treatment begun in 1971 and $10,-000 in serious arrestive procedures by 1977. 252 S.E.2d at 597. Yet the action to recover for all injuries, not filed until late 1976, was not time-barred under Locke’s time-of-the-injury rationale, but rather held timely because of the continuing tort. Fenton involved a similarly wide time spread between the first manifestation of injury and the “last exposure” to wrongful conduct, with the identical dating of accrual at the time the continuing tort ceased with respect to the plaintiff.
Farley and Fenton, in my view, cannot simply be limited on this point as special cases of doctor-patient, or professional service, relationships. What is instead significant about Farley and Fenton is that they extended the continuing tort theory, al*102ready established in other contexts under Virginia law, to malpractice cases, despite previous holdings suggesting to the contrary.6 Nothing in Farley or Fenton purports to contract the limitations period for other forms of continuing torts. Rather, they are particularly instructive as being among the few Virginia cases in which the continuing wrong did not cease until later than the first onset of injury. As such, they demonstrate that a plaintiff last exposed to a continuing wrong within the limitations period is not confined to recovering only such damages as may be attributable to that period, but rather may receive compensation for all injuries cumulatively sustained throughout the course of the continuing tort.7
There is, moreover, no force to the broad notion that Farley and Fenton involve relationships, absent here, that the Commonwealth and society at large especially seek to encourage; there is no societal interest in encouraging a patient to continue to rely on injurious and substandard treatment of a negligent medical practitioner.8 Rather, the “continuing tort” analysis rests on the premise that in some contexts the plaintiff’s ongoing exposure to the harmful situation is not the result of “sleeping on rights,” but occurs instead because the defendant’s continuous tortious behavior precludes its enjoyment of the repose that accompanies the running of the statute of limitations. Unlike the situation where breach is the result of a single past act by the defendant, where there is a continuing tort there is no prejudice to the defendant from the limitations period remaining open so long as the tortfeasor wrongfully maintains the hazardous condition, even beyond the first appearance of injury. If delay in the filing of some suits may result from a “last exposure” rule, it is a consequence of the rule that Virginia courts have already found warranted in reaching the rulings they have.
IV.
Accordingly, I am persuaded that settled principles of Virginia’s law of accrual compel the conclusion that Large’s negligent *103failure to warn cause of action was timely filed.

. Specifically, I concur in judgment for defendants on plaintiffs claims as to (1) breach of express warranty, (2) breach of implied warranty, (3) negligent design and manufacture, (4) strict liability, and (5) reckless indifference to plaintiff’s rights. The sixth claim alleged a negligent failure to warn.

. In some states this principle is cast in terms of the tolling of an otherwise accrued cause of action. See, e.g., Everhart v. Rich’s, Inc., 229 Ga. 798, 194 S.E.2d 425, 428 (1972) (“While the tort [as of the time of injury] is then complete in the sense that it will support a claim, it is nevertheless a tort of a continuing nature which tolls the statute of limitation so long as the continued exposure to the hazard is occasioned by the continued failure of the tortfeasor to warn the victim . ...”), conformed to 196 S.E.2d 475, 128 Ga.App. 319 (1973).

. The Farley defendant relied upon, inter alia, Caudill v. Wise Rambler, Inc., 210 Va. 11, 168 S.E.2d 257 (1969) (breach of implied warranty occurred at time of purchase of automobile; action accrued when injuries later resulted as a consequence) and Hawks v. DeHart, 206 Va. 810, 146 S.E.2d 187 (1966) (single wrongful act of leaving surgical needle in patient’s neck).

. In an unpublished opinion, Chief Judge MacKenzie summarized the Virginia accrual rule as “where plaintiff alleges a continuing series of exposures to toxic substances and/or nuclear radiation from defendants’ products, the cause of action accrued when defendants last inflicted injury on plaintiff, i.e., the last exposure.” Ragland v. General Dynamics, No. 78-194-N, slip op. at 2, (E.D.Va. Aug. 10, 1981).

. Indeed, in Locke the Virginia Supreme Court at least implicitly assumed that plaintiffs claim (negligent failure to warn) survived until the cessation of exposure upon his leaving work in 1972, even had injury occurred earlier. The Locke court stated:
[T]he broad issue to be decided here is whether the plaintiff’s right to bring his action accrued no later than 1972, when he was last exposed to the asbestos fibers from defendants’ products, or whether his right accrued at some subsequent time, and if it did arise later, at what time did the right, in fact, accrue.
275 S.E.2d at 904. As the court also noted, “in all our prior decisions that reject the discovery [of the injury] rule, the injury or damage existed at the time of the wrongful act; it had merely not been discovered in a timely manner. Here, however, there was no injury at the time of the wrongful act.” Id. at 906 (emphasis added).
Thus, even though first exposure to asbestos had occurred in 1948 and injury may well have arisen prior to the Locke plaintiffs leaving work in 1972, the court assumed that accrual of a cause of action for a failure to warn would be dated at the time of last exposure at the earliest. And by distinguishing this case on the basis of one element’s absence despite the presence of the others, the court established the principle that under particular circumstances any of the three elements of a cause of action might serve to delay the start of the statute of limitations.

. See Morgan v. Schlanger, 374 F.2d 235, 240 (4 Cir.1967), concluding after analyzing past Virginia cases in the context of a suit involving an ongoing course of medical treatment that “Virginia would not, in an appropriate case, embrace the continuing treatment rule.”

. The analysis in Richmond v. James, supra, 197 S.E. at 421-22, suggests that the rule as of 1938 would allow recovery only for injuries sustained within the limitations period. However, the Richmond court was only affirming the trial court’s discretionary choice to limit recovery to injuries received within a special statutory notice period applicable to suits against the city under its City Charter, and did not pass on the issue of whether a choice to allow recovery for all injuries would have been sustained. To the extent that Richmond is nonetheless seen as limiting recovery to injuries suffered within the limitations period, it is inconsistent with the same court’s treatment of the actions in Farley and Fenton. As the most recent cases, they should be deemed to announce the governing rule.

. If society’s interest in letting a given relationship run its course is the motivating rationale of the “continuing tort” cases, there are substantial arguments for not penalizing an employee who fails to sue one of the employer’s suppliers while still employed. Experience has shown that even employee actions well outside the strict scope of employment may sometimes result in discharge or more subtle pressures or harassment if an employer perceives such actions as adverse to company interests. See, e.g., Petermann v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 174 Cal.App.2d 184, 344 P.2d 25 (1959) (employee allegedly fired after refusing to commit perjury at legislative hearing); Monge v. Beebe Rubber Co., 114 N.H. 130, 316 A.2d 549 (1974) (female employee allegedly discharged after refusing foreman’s social advances); Nees v. Hocks, 272 Or. 210, 536 P.2d 512 (1975) (discharge allegedly because employee performed jury duty); Geary v. United States Steel Corp., 456 Pa. 171, 319 A.2d 174 (1974) (employee allegedly discharged for reporting product defects to corporate superiors). If a suit such as this one were viewed by the employer as disruptive, the employee might well be put to the choice between failing to satisfy a shorter statute of limitations period or “rocking the boat” while still employed. The continuing tort rule, however, promotes a societal interest in fostering harmonious workplace relations while not forcing the employee to forgo recovery for personal injury. I find nothing in the Virginia cases to suggest that Virginia has concern for the physician-patient relationship but is indifferent to the one between employer and employee.