Court Opinion

ID: 9753075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:56:15.409559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:29.323236
License: Public Domain

WEISBERGER, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority has been persuaded by what it deems an emerging trend to interpret the statute of limitations applicable to personal injury as contained in G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 9-1-14, as amended by P.L.1976, ch. 188, § 1, as requiring a three-pronged test in product liability actions. This test requires three elements:
1. That the plaintiff has learned or reasonably should have learned of the injury;
2. That the plaintiff has learned or reasonably should have learned of a possible *49causal connection between the injury and the product;
3. That the plaintiff has learned or should have learned of some wrongdoing by the drug manufacturer.
I am of the opinion that in product liability cases involving drug manufacturers, the statute of limitations should begin to run when the plaintiff either has knowledge or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have knowledge of the first two elements set forth above, namely, knowledge of the injury and knowledge of a possible causal connection between the injury and the product. The requirement that the plaintiff have knowledge of wrongdoing or culpability on the part of the drug manufacturer in effect would subvert the entire purpose of a statute of limitations. United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 100 S.Ct. 352, 62 L.Ed.2d 259 (1979); Timberlake v. A.H. Robins Co., 727 F.2d 1363 (5th Cir.1984); Fidler v. Eastman Kodak Co., 714 F.2d 192 (1st Cir.1983).
In United States v. Kubrick, the Supreme Court considered when the statute of limitations in respect to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C.A. § 2401(b) (1978), should begin to run in respect to a malpractice action. In that case a veteran had been treated for an infection of the right femur with an antibiotic (Neomycin). In January 1969 Kubrick discovered that he had suffered a hearing loss as a result of the Neomycin treatment administered at the hospital. He did not discover that the Neomycin had been negligently administered until 1971. The District Court and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that even though a plaintiff is aware of his injury and of the causal connection between the injury and the treatment, the statute of limitations does not run when the plaintiff shows that he did not know, nor should he have known, facts that would have alerted a reasonable person to the possibility that the treatment was improper. On certiorari the Supreme Court of the United States reversed with the following comments:
We disagree. We are unconvinced that for statute of limitations purposes a plaintiffs ignorance of his legal rights and his ignorance of the fact of his injury or its cause should receive identical treatment. That he has been injured in fact may be unknown or unknowable until the injury manifests itself; and the facts about causation may be in the control of the putative defendant, unavailable to the plaintiff or at least very difficult to obtain. The prospect is not so bleak for a plaintiff in possession of the critical facts that he has been hurt and who has inflicted the injury. He is no longer at the mercy of the latter. There are others who can tell him if he has been wronged, and he need only ask. If he does ask and if the defendant has failed to live up to minimum standards of medical proficiency, the odds are that a competent doctor will so inform the plaintiff.” Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 122, 100 S.Ct. at 359, 62 L.Ed.2d at 269.
I am persuaded by the reasoning in Kubrick. As Justice White set forth in the majority opinion, statutes of limitation represent a pervasive legislative judgment that it is unjust to fail to put the adversary on notice to defend within a specified period of time. Furthermore, the right to be free of stale claims in time comes to prevail over the right to prosecute them. Order of Railroad Telegraphers v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 321 U.S. 342, 349, 64 S.Ct. 582, 586, 88 L.Ed. 788, 792 (1944). He went on to suggest that a plaintiff who was armed with the facts about the harm done to him and the cause of such harm can protect himself by seeking advice in the medical and legal communities. “To excuse him from promptly doing so by postponing the accrual of his claim [until he is competently advised concerning the wrongdoing of the defendant] would undermine the purpose of the limitations statute * *." Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 123, 100 S.Ct. at 360, 62 L.Ed.2d at 270.
The majority’s three-pronged test is doubtless intended to apply only in such *50complex cases as product liability and medical malpractice actions. However, the complexity of the case should not be allowed to blur or dilute the logical principles underlying a statute of limitations. Similar arguments concerning negligence or culpability might be made in respect to a simple case in which the action would normally accrue at the time of the injury.
For example, let us assume that a plaintiff slips and falls on business premises because of the presence of a substance on the floor of such premises. The plaintiff would immediately have notice of the injury and of the possible connection between the injury and the foreign substance on the floor. However, the plaintiff might not have knowledge of the liability of the defendant owner of the premises for a considerable period thereafter. Such liability would be predicated on negligence. Negligence would consist not only of the knowledge by agents of the defendant that a foreign substance might be on the floor of the business premises but also upon the period of notice of the presence of such substance and the opportunity to have removed the same prior to the plaintiff’s fall. It may well be that if a plaintiff consulted certain attorneys for advice on this matter, he might be told that the absence of evidence of the duration of the presence of this substance would defeat his claim. Other attorneys might well take a different view. However, it has never been suggested until now that the statute of limitations would not begin to run in respect to such an injury until the plaintiff had received proper advice concerning the liability of the defendant. I would caution the majority that its adoption of the three-pronged test may well be the basis for arguments in the future that such a test should be applied to less complex but debatable personal injury liability eases. Such a development would certainly dilute the effectiveness of the statute of limitations.
I am thus unwilling to take the first step down a road that may lead to results that could preserve stale claims of every nature until such time as a plaintiff has received appropriate advice on the issue of liability.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from the answer given to the certified question by the majority.