Court Opinion

ID: 9732563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:25:55.650173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:29.411210
License: Public Domain

LARSON, Justice
(dissenting).
The majority pays lip service to the discovery rule as applied to tort cases in general, yet it refuses to apply the rule here because, for some reason, it considers this case to be unique. Unique, apparently, because it relies on a provision of our Uniform Commercial Code, Iowa Code ch. 554, to determine when an instrument is converted. Despite this reference, this is not a Uniform Commercial Code case. It is a tort case, and we have consistently held that the discovery rule should be applied in tort cases. The majority recognizes this. As our cases have noted, it is inherently unfair to deprive a plaintiff of a claim of which he was not, and could not be, aware.
The rationale for the majority’s conclusion are (1) the need for finality in transactions involving negotiable instruments, and (2) “the presumption that property owners know where their property is located.” (Maj. op. at 478) As to the first rationale, finality and predictability are always arguments favoring strict and unwavering application of statutes of limitation, yet we have subordinated those interests to our interest in fairness. There is, further, no guarantee of uniformity in simply denying application of the discovery rule in all of these cases. Each state has its own statute of limitations, and they vary greatly from one state to another.
As to the second rationale of the majority, that everyone is presumed to know where his property is, two observations should be made: First, there are going to be some cases of conversion, just as in any other tort, when plaintiffs cannot know of the conversion until after the statute of limitations has run. The majority says, as a matter of law, that this plaintiff must be charged with such knowledge, despite the evidence of a complicated scheme of covering up the defalcations.
Second, the majority’s observation that everyone is presumed to know where his property is makes sense if it is the person’s automobile that is missing. But, how can we presume that a business such as Husker News, which deals with thousands of checks each year, must know what has happened to each one of them?
Furthermore, I do not believe it makes any more sense to presume every person knows where his own property is than to say every person is presumed to know when a foreign object is in his own body. Yet, it is almost universally held that the discovery rule applies to cases in which *480instruments of surgery are left in a patient’s body.
I would reverse and remand for factual determinations on the discovery issue.
LAVORATO and SNELL, JJ., join this dissent.