Court Opinion

ID: 9638754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:52:59.729916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:09.372244
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Since federal jurisdiction of this complaint in tort was based on diversity of citizenship, the Massachusetts one year statute of limitations would necessarily be a bar to the action in the federal court if, under the circumstances disclosed, it would have been held to be a bar by the state courts of Massachusetts had the action been brought there. Guaranty Trust Co. of New York v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S.Ct. 1464.
But the Massachusetts decisions cited in Judge MAHONEY’S opinion make it clear *33that the plaintiff’s evidence was sufficient to get to the jury and that, if the jury believed such evidence (as it did), then as a matter of Massachusetts law the defendant was precluded from relying upon the statute of limitations as a bar. The statute of limitations is unqualified in terms; but by judicial decision in Massachusetts it has become established law that the statute, which “is for the benefit of individuals and not to secure general objects of policy”, may be “waived” by — or rendered unavailable to — a party whose course of conduct, reasonably relied on by the other party, has made it contrary to the general principles of fair dealing and good conscience to take advantage of the bar of the statute. Mc-Learn v. Hill, 1931, 276 Mass. 519, 524, 525, 177 N.E. 617, 77 A.L.R. 1039.
The Massachusetts cases sometimes speak of this as an application of the doctrine of “estoppel”. McLearn v. Hill, supra; Hayes v. Gessner, 1944, 315 Mass. 366, 52 N.E.2d 968. It is not the conventional estoppel in pais, where a party who has made a false representation of fact, upon the faith of which the other party has been reasonably induced to make a detrimental change of position, is “estop-ped” to deny the truth of the representation he has made. Nor is it an instance of the doctrine of “promissory estoppel” under which a promise, though not supported by a technical “consideration”, is enforceable in assumpsit where the promise has reasonably induced action or forbearance of a definite and substantial character on the part of the promisee. American Law Institute, Restatement of Contracts, § 90. The present action sounds in tort for personal injuries, and, the defendant being precluded from resting on the statute of limitations, the amount of recovery is based upon the damages proved to the satisfaction of the jury — it is therefore immaterial that the insurance adjuster made no promise to settle for a definite sum.
Whether “estoppel” is the right word is an unimportant matter of terminology. What counts is the substantive result. Under the old strict differentiation between law and equity, perhaps the plaintiff would have been required to file a bill in equity setting up the circumstances under which, in equity and good conscience, the defendant should be precluded from insisting upon the bar of the statute and asking for an injunction against the pleading of such defense in the pending law action, as was done in Howard v. West Jersey R. R. Co., 1928, 102 N.J.Eq. 517, 141 A. 755. But the Massachusetts decisions have sanctioned in the action at law what is in effect an equitable replication to the plea in bar.
In the present case the jury was warranted in finding that the insurance adjuster, who under the terms of the policy acted as agent of the defendant in negotiating a settlement, induced the plaintiff not to engage a lawyer and not to file a complaint within the short statutory period upon his assurance that a lawyer would not be needed, that liability would not be contested, and that a settlement .would be made for plaintiff’s hospital bills, her injuries and suffering, when she got well and the full extent oí her injuries became manifest. The facts of the case closely parallel those in Hayes v. Gessner, 1944, 315 Mass. 366, 52 N.E.2d 968, and in Howard v. West Jersey R. R. Co., 1928, 102 N.J.Eq. 517, 141 A. 755, in both of which cases the defendant was not allowed to take advantage of the statute of limitations. The Howard case was cited with approval by the Massachusetts court in McLearn v. Hill, 1931, 276 Mass. 519, 525, 177 N.E. 617, 77 A.L. R. 1039.
Defendant further contends that the plaintiff has become disentitled to invoke this so-called doctrine of estoppel because she did not file her complaint until after the lapse of almost two years from the date the insurance adjuster told her that it was “too late”, that she was “out of luck”, and that the statute of limitations would be insisted upon as a bar to recovery. Since what I have termed the “equitable replication” to the plea of the statute depends upon equitable considerations, it is possible that the plaintiff might be barred by laches from obtaining what amounts' to equitable relief against the setting up of the statute of limitations by the defendant. But “laches is not mere delay, but delay that works disadvantage to another.” Calkins v. Wire Hardware Co., 1929, 267 Mass. 52, 69, 165 N.E. 889, 897. There is nothing in the record to show that the defendant has been prejudiced by the plaintiff’s failure to bring suit immediately after the insurance adjuster repudiated liability. The defendant did not request a charge by the trial judge on this theory of the case. Indeed, as Judge MAHONEY’S opinion *34points out, the defendant did not raise any question of laches in the District Court until after judgment for the plaintiff had been entered and appeal had been taken to this court. This was too late.