Court Opinion

ID: 9600431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:27:00.234547+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:18.651608
License: Public Domain

ROVIRA, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent, because I believe that the General Assembly meant what it said when it said “after the date of the discovery of the injury.” Section 24-10-109, C.R.S.1973.
The respondent was arrested on March 1, 1978. She was told by the arresting police officer that the arrest was based on an outstanding warrant from El Paso County. She alleges that during the process of arrest she suffered “great physical discomfort, embarrassment, and humiliation.” This is her injury. The question under section 109 is when did she discover that she had been discomforted, embarrassed, and humiliated. The answer must be on March 1, 1978. See Young v. State, 642 P.2d 18 (Colo.App.1981) (Kelly, J., dissenting).
In Evans v. Board of County Commissioners, 174 Colo. 97, 482 P.2d 968 (1971), we abolished sovereign immunity as a judicial doctrine. In so doing, we recognized that “[i]f the General Assembly wishes to restore sovereign immunity and governmental immunity, in whole or in part, it has the authority to do so.” 174 Colo. at 105, 482 P.2d at 972. We also stated that “[i]f the legislative arm of our government does not completely restore these immunities, then undoubtedly it will wish to place limitations upon the actions that may be brought against the state and its subdivisions. This, too, it has full authority to accomplish.” Id. This it did.
*112The legislature could have restored sovereign immunity altogether. Instead, it chose to provide a right of action, while at the same time imposing a rather strict time limitation on the exercise of the right. Time limitations in statutes of creation are to be strictly construed. Montgomery v. Polk County, 278 N.W.2d 911 (Iowa 1979), 56 Am.Jur.2d Municipal Corporations § 687. They are not merely inconvenient hurdles for a court to clear on the way to its decision on the “merits.” The General Assembly has spoken, and it is not for this court to establish a contrary rule merely because it believes that its rule “furthers the interest of justice.”1
The majority opinion recognizes that the requirement of prompt notice “serves important and particular purposes in actions against governmental entities,” but it states that the rule it announces “does not hinder unduly the effectuation of these purposes.” I disagree.
It also states that “the requirement of prompt notice is designed to eliminate stale claims and protect defendants from open-ended vulnerability to suit.” It is true in this case that, by fortuitous circumstance, the state’s vulnerability to suit was extended by only 17 days. However, under the rule announced today, if the respondent had not received the docket sheet for a year and 17 days, she would still have been entitled to bring an action.
Another purpose of the notice requirement is to foster “prompt investigations while the evidence is fresh.” Yet, the “basis of the claim” test, at least as applied here, does not foster investigation at all. One may sit back, as did the respondent, and wait until information concerning the basis of the claim falls into his lap.
The notice requirement is also designed to facilitate the state’s financial planning. This policy is also hindered by the new test. The open-ended liability that the state now faces cannot do other than impede its ability to estimate its future liabilities.
It is not difficult to predict the use to which this test will be put by imaginative counsel. An action that would have been barred under the statute as written will not be barred if counsel can conceive of a theory of recovery, one of the elements of which has been only recently discovered.2
Even if I agreed with the majority that the statute should be rewritten to provide that the notice period should be calculated from “the date of knowledge of the basis of the claim,” I would still hold that the respondent’s claim is barred. The majority believes that the respondent did not have a reasonable opportunity to discover the basic facts underlying her claim until she received the copy of the docket sheet on March 17. While she did not discover the basis of her claim until March 17, I do not understand how it could be said that she had no reasonable opportunity to do so prior to that date.
The respondent knew on March 1 that she was wrongfully arrested, yet the majority imposes no duty on her to determine what the basis of her claim might be. This is not a case where a person did not know he was injured, or where he knew he was injured but did not know that the injury was wrongful. The respondent knew on March 1 that she had been wrongfully injured and that the injury was due to an arrest warrant issued by El Paso County.
The act that started the chain of events resulting in the respondent’s being sent the docket sheet was her telephone call of *113March 15 to El Paso County to find out when she was supposed to appear. She could have made the call two weeks earlier and thereby discovered the basis of her claim, but she didn’t. One would think that being arrested on a warrant whose existence was unknown to the person arrested would constitute notice that something was wrong, and would lead the person arrested to make immediate inquiries.
Even after the respondent discovered the basis of her claim on March 17, after having waited two weeks to make an inquiry, she had two-and-a-half months to act. I do not view this as “an unfair burden, if not an impossible requirement.”
I would reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.
I am authorized to say that Justice LOHR joins me in this dissent.

. I am at a loss to understand the majority’s reliance on Brady v. City and County of Denver, 181 Colo. 218, 508 P.2d 1254 (1973). In Brady, we held that the notice period commenced against an alleged tort-feasor seeking indemnification when he learned of the secondary injury, not when he learned that the injury might be due to the negligence of the hospital. In essence, we rejected the “basis of the claim” test.

. The reasoning of the majority opinion, if consistently applied, must lead to the conclusion that notice that does not contain all the elements of a cause of action is inadequate. That is, because the phrase “the basis of the claim” appears but once in the statute, it can have only one meaning. The lenient' interpretation for purposes of determining when the notice period commences thus creates a strict requirement concerning the content of the notice.