Court Opinion

ID: 9752294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:55:43.741906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:13.296772
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I join the court’s opinion and write briefly to make clear why I agree with its disposition of the statute of limitations issue.
I do not share the view, reflected in the decision the court quotes at the outset of its discussion, that statutes of limitations “ ‘are technical defenses which should be strictly construed to avoid the forfeiture of a plaintiffs rights.’ ” Ante at 1233 (quoting Steketee v. Lintz, Williams & Rothberg, 38 Cal.3d 46, 210 Cal.Rptr. 781, 786, 694 P.2d 1153, 1158 (1985)).
“Statutes of limitations are not simply technicalities. On the contrary, they have long been respected as fundamental to a well-ordered judicial system.” Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U.S. 478, 487, 100 S.Ct. 1790, 1796, 64 L.Ed.2d 440 (1980). They embody “the judgment of most legislatures and courts” that “there comes a point at which the delay of a plaintiff in asserting a claim is sufficiently likely either to impair the accuracy of the factfind-ing process or to upset settled expectations that a substantial claim will be barred without respect to whether it is meritorious.” Id.; see also Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 314, 65 S.Ct. 1137, 1142, 89 L.Ed. 1628 (1945).
Bond v. Serano, 566 A.2d 47, 50 (D.C.1989) (Farrell, J., concurring). Our task is to apply statutes of limitations according to their intended meaning as best we can discern it, not aided (if that is the word) by a rule of strict construction or a bias in favor of resolving disputes on the merits.
Second, despite broad suggestions to that effect in the court’s opinion, application of the new statute of limitations to bar the Henkel plaintiffs’ claim would create no constitutional problem. The new statute became effective February 28, 1987. OCF does not seriously dispute that accrual of the Henkels’ cause can fairly be dated as January 15, 1987, when Mr. Henkel received a letter from his physician informing him of a possible causal link between the asbestos exposure and his laryngeal cancer. Henkel therefore had fully eleven months in which to bring suit, which was manifestly “a reasonable time ... within which to sue under the new statute.” Kalis v. Leahy, 88 U.S.App. D.C. 166, 167, 188 F.2d 633, 634, cert. denied, 341 U.S. 926, 71 S.Ct. 797, 95 L.Ed. 1358 (1951). As the court acknowledges, any due process claim that the new statute unfairly cut off a previous right to sue would have to be as applied. Ante at 1234 (quoting Doran v. Compton, 645 F.2d 440, 446 & n. 9 (5th Cir.1981) (statute unconstitutional if “so applied as not to allow a reasonable time”)). The Henkels would have no such argument.
Nevertheless, in treating the interplay of two statutes of limitations, the later one clearly intended to liberalize the time for filing suit, the court has reasonably concluded that the second statute was not meant to bar suits based on causes of action accruing before its effective date. Under OCF’s contrary interpretation, a potentially large number of causes that ripened under the former three-year period would retroactively be denied a remedy, something wholly inconsistent with the ameliorative purpose of the new statute. OCF relies on section 6 of the act, which makes the new law apply to “actions pending in a court on July 1, 1986, and to actions filed in a court after July 1, 1986”— ie., well before the effective date of the new statute. But, as the court points out, read literally this would obliterate actions previously filed that were timely under the existing statute but not under the new one, a bizarre result given the conceded purpose of the statute. Section 6 is rationally understood as meant to benefit persons who had previously filed suits that were pending as far back as July 1, 1986, but who would lose on limitations grounds except for the key liberalizing feature of the new statute: the *1237linking of accrual to an actual “disability defined by reference to “loss of time for work.” The broad language of § 12-311(a) cited by OCF (“In any civil action for injury or illness based upon exposure to asbestos” (emphasis added)) does not compel the conclusion that the Council meant to bar suits deferred in reliance on a three-year limitations period later superseded.