Court Opinion

ID: 9884204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:47:35.726352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:36.574583
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the trial court:
1. Minn.Stat. § 541.051 providing a two year statute of limitations was enacted April 7, 1980, effective August 1, 1980. It provides that any claim must be brought within two years of the date of discovery of the damages. Here, the explosion occurred in June 1980, four years before the assertion of claims against Conkey. Appellants should have filed their claim by August 1982, but did not do so until September 1984.
2. The trial court found Minn.Stat. § 541.051 applied retroactively and that the postponement of the statute’s effective date evidenced a legislative intent to apply the law retroactively, relying on Kozisek v. Brigham, 169 Minn. 57, 210 N.W. 622 (1926), where the legislature provided a three month period between the statute’s enactment and effective date. We recently addressed the retroactive issue of Minn. Stat. § 541.051 in Lovgren v. Peoples Electric Co., 368 N.W.2d 16 (Minn.Ct.App.1985). A petition for review, filed June 11, 1985, was granted by the supreme court July 26, 1985. Lovgren held that the statute should be applied retroactively, relying exclusively on the 115 day postponement of the statute’s effective date as providing a reasonable time in which the plaintiff could have filed a cause of action. Here, however, the majority, rather than applying the precedent of Lovgren, state they consider that portion of the decision to be obiter dictum and of no precedential value. This is an indirect way of overruling another court of appeals’ panel without directly saying so and a practice which I would hope would now cease and not continue.
3. Even if the statute was not considered to be retroactive in application, the dismissal should be affirmed because the appellants had two full months before the effective date of the statute and 22 months after the effective date from the time of the explosion in June 1980 to have filed their claim. Appellants delayed over four years after the statute’s effective date. At the very least, the statute should be applied *576from August 1, 1980 to bar those claims that existed but were not filed before August 1, 1982. As with other potential plaintiffs, appellants became fully advised of the two year limitation when the statute was enacted. Their failure to timely commence their action ignores the express words of the statute itself. At the very least, it should be applied to claims in existence at the time the statute became effective. A prospective application of the statute would give full effect to the statute and would not deprive appellants of any due process rights. Appellants conducted extensive discovery, investigated their claims, and sued a number of defendants by June 1981. To permit a claim against Conkey under the facts here would permit a potential plaintiff to have an additional two year period whenever a theory of liability was developed against someone after the two year period elapsed from the incident or the discovery of the damage itself. Once a cause of action has occurred, ignorance is not an excuse sufficient to avoid the statutory period. See Dalton v. Dow Chemical Co., 280 Minn. 147, 158 N.W.2d 580 (1968).
4. Thus I would affirm and permit the parties to petition for discretionary review or, in the alternative, certify to the supreme court for their final decision in view of accepting review of Lovgren.