Court Opinion

ID: 9861657
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:16:24.165549+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:47.581333
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
First the Court zigs, see Apgar v. Lederle Laboratories, 123 N.J. 450, 588 A.2d 380 (1991), then, in today’s case, it zags by *251following the Appellate Division’s “new” law. The court below, unable to fit the facts into the “discovery” rule, decided to create its own extension of the rule, acknowledging that its new creation had never before been “considered by our courts in a reported decision.” Savage v. Old Bridge-Sayreville Medical Group, 260 N.J.Super. 417, 421, 616 A.2d 1307 (1992). The Appellate Division’s new category of “discovery-rule” case, which this Court now adopts, is one in which a plaintiff knows of the injury (here, tooth discoloration) and the cause-in-fact thereof (here, medication that had been administered during childhood); and even though the defendant had not misled the plaintiff, nevertheless the plaintiff may simply have had no reasonable basis to link the administration of tetracycline to the actionable fault or wrongdoing of another. So, says the court, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until a plaintiff makes, or reasonably should make, that link.
Not only is that rule new, it resurrects a notion that I thought we had long since buried, namely, the requirement that a plaintiff discover actionable fault before the statute of limitations begins to run. Fifteen years ago, in a case that has remained good law until today, this Court said:
The statute of limitations necessarily imputes conclusively to a claimant knowledge that the law affords or may afford a cause of action on the basis of those facts of injury and causal relationship which in law do evoke a cause of action. * * * The discovery principle modifies the conventional limitations rule only to the extent of postponing the commencement of accrual of the cause of action until plaintiff learns, or reasonably should learn, the existence of that state of facts which may equate in law with a cause of action. There is no suggestion in any of the leading cases in this- area that accrual of the cause of action is postponed until plaintiff learns or should learn the state of the law positing a right of recovery upon the facts already known to or reasonably knowable by the plaintiff.
[Burd v. New Jersey Tel Co., 76 N.J. 284, 291-92, 386 A.2d 1310 (1978) (second emphasis added).]
Here, as did the plaintiff in Apgar, plaintiff knew early on that her tooth discoloration had been caused by one of the many medications she had taken as a child, but not until 1988 (she had turned twenty-one in 1982) did she learn that the damaging drug was tetracycline and that her doctors may have acted improperly *252in prescribing it. Ms. Savage started this suit when she was twenty-eight years old, within two years of having discovered the causal relationship between the improper prescribing of tetracycline and her condition. However, on defendant’s motions for summary judgment, the trial court declined to give plaintiff the benefit of the discovery rule inasmuch as plaintiff had, for many years, been aware of facts that suggested that she should investigate whether she had an actionable claim. The court said that no Lopez hearing was necessary because the critical facts, taken from the deposition testimony of plaintiff and her mother, were not in dispute. This Court, guaranteeing that we will be faced with at least one, probably two, and possibly three additional court events, sends the case back for a trial court to decide whether plaintiff “was reasonably unaware until 1988 that fault on the part of her physicians had caused her injury.” Ante at 249-50, 633 A.2d at 519.
Who will volunteer to explain this result to Kelly Ann Apgar? Relying on Burd, supra, 76 N.J. 284, 386 A.2d 1310, a unanimous Court decided, in March 1991, that in Ms. Apgar’s case the trial court should have entered summary judgment for defendants. Here is the heart of our ruling:
In this case Ms. Apgar knew by the time she reached her twenty-first birthday that her teeth had been discolored and, based on information from several dentists, that medication she had taken as a child had produced the staining. No one gave her a contrary opinion. Her own belief was that the medicine she had ingested as a child had caused the condition. She was therefore aware of a “state of facts which may equate in law with a cause of action.” Burd, supra, 76 N.J. at 291, 386 A.2d 1310 (emphasis deleted). On that view of the case the statute of limitations expired on August 19, 1984, two years after plaintiffs twenty-first birthday. Inasmuch as she did not start suit until March 22, 1988, her claim is time-barred.
[123 N.J. at 455, 588 A.2d 380.]
I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstate the judgment of the trial court in favor of defendants.
Justices POLLOCK and GARIBALDI join in this opinion.
*253For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices HANDLER, O’HERN and STEIN — 4.
For reversal — Justices CLIFFORD, POLLOCK and GARIBALDI — 3.