Court Opinion

ID: 9551353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:51:58.15004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:38.184736
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. I cannot agree with the reasoning in Berry v. Branner, the Oregon case upon which the main opinion so heav*203ily relies. The upshot of the main opinion here is judicial legislation, no matter how you slice it. It concedes that legislation specifically has made exceptions to the limitations statutes with respect to fraud, mistake, detaining or injuring personalty. This, to me, seems to indicate an indisposition on the part of the legislature to extend the exception area to other limitations statutes.
Although the main opinion specifically restricts itself to medical people who leave sponges, needles and the like in the body, occasioned by surgery, there is no logical or reasonable reason why the next case, involving an error by an attorney, for example, who examines an abstract of title, is not discovered until ten years later when a seller, having for the first time an opportunity to sell his house discovers the negligence of the attorney. The same reasoning could be urged in personal injury cases and others. In other words the limitations statutes can be emasculated simply by judicial fiat in excepting therefrom certain areas and professions which the legislature has not seen fit to except, on the rather tenuous, but not legislative, sanction or approval of the so-called “discovery” theory.
It is obvious that limitations statutes, in their role of repose, may lead to harsh results. But they are there, and it seems to me that the legislature, not the courts,' should either make the exceptions, — or simply abolish the limitations statutes without having them whittled away piecemeal by courts that, in an isolated case, decide that such statutes just ain’t fair.
I can see why Mr. Christiansen, through no fault of his own, may be entitled to some sort of redress. Trouble is, the legislature as yet has not provided the instru-mentalities for it, and it is not the prerogative of this court to enact a statute for it.