Court Opinion

ID: 9650168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:26:09.923223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:18.651384
License: Public Domain

PRICE, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority has adopted without qualification the “discovery” rule in applying the applicable statute of limitations. In so doing they have stretched the somewhat elastic rule of law heretofore applicable in Pennsylvania. Whether this stretching is beyond the breaking point of the elastic or not is, I suppose, ultimately for our Supreme Court. For now, however, I must dissent for to my view the elastic snapped early in my reading of the majority opinion.
Accepting for the purpose of this appeal fraud and concealment, active or passive, on the part of appellees and reasonable diligence or the inherently unknowable nature of *225the injury for the appellant, the fact remains, uncontroverted, that appellant discovered the injury on August 9,1973, a period of 15 months prior to the November 16,1974 run date of the statute. The removal of the eye was some 13 months prior to the run date of the statute. I find no case in Pennsylvania that extends the statute under such circumstances. My reading convinces me that the present law of Pennsylvania permits extension of the statute only if the injury could not be discovered by reasonable diligence within the time period, or fraud and concealment covered the injury during the time period.
If sympathy was the rule of law I would happily accept the majority view. It is not the law, however, and I must dissent.
I would affirm the order granting summary judgment.
JACOBS, President Judge, joins in this dissenting statement.