Court Opinion

ID: 9851229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:09:13.06789+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:51.742496
License: Public Domain

*181REES, Justice
(dissenting in part, concurring in part and in result).
I cannot agree with the conclusion and holding in Division V of the majority opinion that claims of parties properly members of the class who “timely intervene in the proceedings below” in accordance with Rule 75, Rules of Civil Procedure, shall be deemed brought, for limitation purposes, when the appropriate defendant was legally served in the original litigation.
I agree with the majority that this is a question of first impression in Iowa. I might also observe the limitation question was not presented in this appeal and was accordingly not briefed or argued by the parties.
The holding of the majority in Division V offends my sense of justice and fair play. The actions accrued in 1970, and the suit which eventuated in this appeal was instituted in 1973.
The primary purpose of a statute of limitations is to compel the exercise of a right of action within a reasonable time so that the opposing party has a fair opportunity to defend. Statutes of limitation are founded upon the general experience of mankind that claims which are valid are not usually permitted to remain neglected if the right to sue thereon exists. 51 Am.Jur.2d, Limitations of Actions, § 17, p. 602.
If we are to proceed to the disposition of this question in this appeal, I would hold that in a class action of the character of the case before us an interested party has an absolute right to come in and be joined as a party plaintiff only so long as his claim is valid and enforceable by an independent suit. If the holding of the majority is to prevail a potential plaintiff could be admitted as a party many years hence, if the suit were then pending. We must not, in my judgment, establish that doctrine. See MacArdell v. Olcott (Appeal of Sillcocks), 62 App.Div. 127, 70 N.Y.S. 930 (1901). See also 13 Villanova Law Rev. 370, 378, 388, 392.
I adhere to the view that statutes of limitation are statutes of repose, based on the proposition that persons who sleep on their rights may lose them, and are designed to compel the exercise of a right of action within a reasonable time, and to suppress stale claims. I am prepared to concede that the policy of repose expressed in statutes of limitation may, and should be, outweighed if the interests of justice require vindication of a plaintiffs rights where a plaintiff has not been dilatory in asserting his rights or has for some reason been prevented from asserting them. I do not perceive such a factual situation here, and in any event to permit wholesale join-ders in this case after the rights accrued seven years since, and, but for the holding of the majority, would have been long since barred by existing statutes of limitation is, in my view, fundamentally unfair. Section 51 Am.Jur.2d, Limitation of Actions, § 16, p. 601 (and citations).
I would not permit intervention in this case by parties whose rights accrued in 1970, as did the rights of the named plaintiffs.
I therefore concur in the result and in all of the divisions of the opinion except Division V from which I dissent.
LeGRAND, J., joins in dissenting in part, concurring in part and in result.