Court Opinion

ID: 9857232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:05:41.286485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:18.092712
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting in part.
I would hold that as to defendant Volkswagen of America, Inc. (Volkswagen), the dismissal of plaintiffs’ Bergen County action should have been with prejudice, for the reason that by the time the motion to dismiss was made, the statute of limitations, N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, had run.1 I do not agree that the issue of the statute of limitations is not before us. If the statute had run at the time of the dismissal, it necessarily follows that the dismissal had to be with prejudice. It is clear to me beyond debate that it was the trial court’s doubts about whether the statute had in fact run that were at the heart of its decision to make the dismissal “without” prejudice rather than, as I would rule, “with.”
I
The accident occurred on December 10, 1977. In timely fashion the injured drivers and passenger started separate actions, later consolidated, against the allegedly culpable parties. Thereafter, but before the two years allowed by the statute of limitations had run, plaintiffs’ attorney discovered facts that alerted him to the likelihood that the Volkswagen defendants might bear some liability for Crispin’s injuries. Accordingly, he commenced a products liability suit against Volkswagen by filing a complaint in Superior Court, Bergen County, on December 7, 1979, three days before the expiration of the two years from the date of the accident.
*358For the succeeding thirteen months plaintiffs’ counsel went through the shenanigans, recited ante at 339-40, that transformed the Union County proceedings into a bit of a charade. During that same period the Bergen County suit, as recounted by the Appellate Division,
stayed in a “parked” position, and even when faced with a R. 1:13-7(a) notice from the court, dated August 26, 1980, that the matter would be dismissed for want of prosecution, counsel filed no affidavit “explaining the delay and why the action should not be dismissed * * * without call.” Ibid. It was dismissed on September 30, 1980. Counsel did not move to reinstate the Bergen suit until after a settlement of Crispin’s Union County case was effected. That motion, made November 26, 1980, almost one year after the complaint was filed, was granted in an order dated January 5, 1981. This order directed service upon Volkswagen and set a trial date of April 13, 1981, but four months in the future.
Immediately following that January 5, 1981 order, and thirteen months after the complaint against Volkswagen had been filed, the summons issued and the complaint was served. There followed the motion and dismissal, based on Rule 4:4-1 and Rule 4:37-2(a).
That the complaint was properly dismissed is plain. As the Appellate Division pointed out,
[pjlaintiff’s tactics were not only unfair to Volkswagen and the Union County defendants, they were a deliberate abuse of the court rules and a disservice to the court and other litigants as well. This sort of calculated ploy should not be encouraged.
But the “without prejudice” character of the dismissal meant, simply, that the dismissal did not prejudice plaintiffs from reinstituting their suit. A dismissal “without prejudice” does not amount to an adjudication on the merits and cannot constitute a defense to a second action. A plaintiff is free to proceed, subject to whatever other defenses a defendant may have.
One of those defenses is the statute of limitations. During the course of oral argument on Volkswagen’s motion to dismiss, the trial court was informed that if the complaint were dismissed without prejudice and plaintiffs were permitted to file anew, Volkswagen would move for summary judgment on the basis that the action would be time-barred by the two-year statute of limitations. Because the trial court believed that *359there might be a statute of limitations issue lurking somewhere, it forebore making the dismissal with prejudice so that the parties could test that issue elsewhere. Hence, the following:
COURT: The Court is going to grant the motion [to dismiss the Bergen County complaint]. However, there has not been a hearing on the merits; accordingly, it will not be with prejudice. The plaintiffs take the position that they are not barred by the statute of limitations. If that is an issue, I believe that the law is clear that there should be a plenary hearing with regard to whether or not the statute of limitations has run.
MR. WEINSTEIN: Will your Honor be hearing the testimony with reference to that hearing?
COURT: So that it’s clear, this action is dismissed. If you bring another action, it would seem to me that there may be an issue at that time; namely, whether or not the statute of limitations has run.
No one seems to quarrel with the proposition that if it were obvious (as it is to me) that a second suit would be barred by the statute of limitations, a dismissal “without prejudice” would be pointless, particularly when, as here, defendant represents that the limitation defense is certain to be raised and earnestly pursued. To permit the course of the second suit to be run until that final obstacle is in fact encountered — complaint filed, defendant served, answer filed, motion papers prepared and filed, argument heard, decision rendered — would be to countenance a profligate abuse of court time and an abasement of the judicial system. It should not have been allowed here.
II
The only possible basis for questioning whether the statute of limitations had expired when the Bergen County suit was dismissed is our “discovery rule.” Under my view of the rule, see Lynch v. Rubacky, 85 N.J. 65, 78 (1981) (dissenting opinion); Burd v. New Jersey Tel. Co., 76 N.J. 284, 293 (1978) (concurring opinion); Moran v. Napolitano, 71 N.J. 133, 142 (1976) (dissenting opinion); Fox v. Passaic Gen. Hosp., 71 N.J. 122, 128 (1976) (dissenting opinion), the statute had long since run by the time the motion to dismiss was made and the order of dismissal entered.
*360A decent respect for the indulgence and sensitivity of those members of the Court who have by now become all too well-acquainted with my position on this issue, albeit remaining impenetrably resistant to it, compels me to keep to a minimum any restatement thereof. This will suffice:
[W]hen a plaintiff in personal injury litigation, prior to the expiration of the two-year time limit of the statute of limitations, N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2, discovers or reasonably should discover those facts that the law equates with a cause of action, he must proceed with reasonable diligence to bring suit within so much of the two-year period as remains unexpired. This rule would give a plaintiff the benefit of an “expanded” statute of limitations only upon a showing that under the particular circumstances he had insufficient time expeditiously to file his complaint between discovery and expiration of the statutory period. [Lynch, v. Rubacky, supra, 85 N.J. at 78.]
Here, plaintiffs’ discovery of the facts giving rise to a claim against Volkswagen came sufficiently in advance of the two years following the accident as to allow suit to be commenced within that period. Counsel acted with expedition in filing the complaint. The significant point is that plaintiff filed the Bergen County suit on December 7, 1979, within two years of the date of the accident, December 10, 1977. The filing of the complaint in the Bergen County action did not toll the running of the statute. Thereafter the statute ran, while the complaint gathered dust.
Surely under these circumstances there was no need to expand the ordinary statute-of-limitations period or to recognize • some “new” one. Plaintiff had “discovered” facts implicating additional defendants and had acted on them within the two-year period. Nothing more remained to be “discovered,” and no stretching of time limitations was required to afford plaintiff any additional time to start suit.
All of the foregoing was apparent on the face of things when Volkswagen moved to dismiss the complaint for failure of the summons to have issued for some thirteen months after the filing of the complaint. Therefore, the statute of limitations having already run, the dismissal should have been “with prejudice.”
*361I would reverse and remand to the trial court for entry there of judgment in favor of defendant Volkswagen of America, Inc.
Justices SCHREIBER and GARIBALDI join in this opinion.
HANDLER, J., concurring in the result.
For affirmance—Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK and O’HERN—4.
For reversal and remandment—Justices CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER and GARIBALDI—3.

 Defendant Volkswagenwerk, A.G. may be in a different status. See ante at 341 n. 2.