Court Opinion

ID: 9678204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:14:20.991146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:02.527121
License: Public Domain

HEFLIN, Chief Justice
(concurring specially) :
I concur in the result that the judgment of the trial court is due to be affirmed. I further agree with Justices Harwood, Bloodworth, Jones and Faulkner that the concluding proviso of Section 1 of Act 788, 1969 Acts of Alabama, p. 1418, violates Section 45 of the Constitution of 1901.
The title to the act clearly reflects an intention to establish a statute of limitations in the traditional and procedural sense. The language of the body of the act deals primarily with a substantive matter, that being the creation of an absolute immunity against suits after the passage of certain periods of time.
It appears to me that the 4-year limitation in the tort context here applicable is likewise offensive to the same constitutional prohibition in that such provision is not a statute of limitations but, instead, prescribes an immunity against suits. The “six months following discovery” saving clause does not of itself render this four year provision a procedural period of limitation under the tort context here applicable for the reason that these two provisions can not be intermeshed without vagueness, indefiniteness and uncertainty. See Mims v. Blanton, 272 Ala. 457, 131 So.2d 861 (1961); Marshall County Board of Education v. State, 252 Ala. 547, 42 So. 2d 24 (1949); Opinion of the Justices, 249 Ala. 88, 30 So.2d 14 (1947).
There may be circumstances under which the act does operate as a valid procedural statute of limitations. Perhaps as applied in a contract situation portions of the act could be upheld. See Wilkins v. Woolf, 281 Ala. 693, 208 So.2d 74 (1968); *199Hamilton v. Autauga County, 289 Ala. 419, 268 So.2d 30 (1972). But in cases involving torts on third parties — the context of the instant case — I can see no field of constitutional operation.
Moreover, I would affirm because Title 7, Section 36, Code of Alabama, 1940 (Recompiled 1958) allows infants additional time to bring suits.