Court Opinion

ID: 9466885
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:31:31.524596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:01.650472
License: Public Domain

CHARLES CLARK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that Woodburn’s injury was manifest no later than May 23, 1974, the date this court decided Powell v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 494 F.2d 485 (5th Cir. 1974). As the majority notes, the district court denied LTV’s motion for summary judgment approximately a year before the Powell decision, ruling in Woodburn’s favor on the question whether Woodburn gave timely notice of intent to sue. Therefore, on the date of Powell, Woodburn was prevailing on the very issue on which Powell is asserted to have made his injury manifest. Moreover, the record reveals that defendant LTV did not move the district court to reconsider its earlier motion until August 27, 1975, a year and three months after Powell. Woodburn thus had an outstanding and unchallenged judicial ruling in his favor that he had given satisfactory notice until long after we decided Powell.
Had Woodburn tried to file his malpractice action at the time the majority holds that Woodburn’s cause of action accrued, surely the defendant attorneys would have been able to have such a suit dismissed as premature. Woodburn had not then suffered any legal injury. He had an adjudication, albeit ultimately reversed, that Powell did not control his case. Indeed, at that time it was possible that LTV would never *593move the court to reconsider its earlier motion and that Woodburn would prevail on this issue.
I do not believe that Texas law requires the filing of such premature, anticipatory malpractice actions. Pack v. Taylor, 586 S.W.2d 484 (Tex.Civ.App. 1979), and Cox v. Rosser, 579 S.W.2d 73 (Tex.Civ.App. 1979), do not compel such a result. In each of those cases, the attorney allegedly acted negligently in a straightforward legal situation: Pack involved the question whether the plaintiff’s signing a release would bar his subsequent suit for damages; Cox dealt with the failure to include an express lien in the execution of a deed. In neither case-was it suggested that the law was new, unsettled, or even confusing. In neither case had a court in a then pending action ruled in plaintiff’s favor on precisely the issue of the legal effect of the defendant’s alleged negligence. I agree that the Texas rule in such straightforward situations is that the statute begins to run when the attorney’s negligence causes the plaintiff injury and not when a court adjudicates the fact of injury. I do not believe that Texas would hold this rule should control the present case.
I think Texas would hold that Wood-burn’s cause of action accrued no earlier than August 27,1975, when the defendants filed their motion to reconsider in light of Powell. It might plausibly be contended that it accrued no earlier than November 7, 1975, the date Judge Hill dismissed the action. In either event, Woodburn commenced this malpractice action within the two-year statutory period. I would therefore not reach the issue whether Texas permits the discovery rule in legal malpractice actions nor whether the contract statute of limitations can apply to malpractice actions.
Prospective litigants should be encouraged to file their lawsuits as soon as they have suffered an injury, and should not await a judicial declaration of injury. On the other hand, a party who has received a judicial declaration of no injury should not be compelled to add a burden on the courts based solely on conjecture. I would reverse and remand.