Court Opinion

ID: 9537891
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:26:30.859488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:08.819204
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OE
MARUMOTO, J.
I dissent. The sole question here is the existence or nonexistence of a genuine issue of material fact, the material fact being whether the actions of the adjuster of defendants’ insurance carrier were such as to lull plaintiff’s attorney reasonably into a feeling of security that the defense of statute of limitation would not be asserted.
The existence or nonexistence of that issue is determined by the same test, which is applicable to a motion for directed verdict. Chambers v. United States, 357 F.2d 224 (8th Cir. 1966); Fischer Construction Co. v. Firemen’s Fund Insurance Co., 420 F.2d 271 (10th Cir. 1969).
That test is stated in Brady v. Southern Railway Co., 320 U.S. 476, 479 (1943), as follows:
“When the evidence is such that without weighing *589the credibility of the witnesses there can be but one reasonable conclusion as to the verdict, the court should determine the proceeding by non-suit, directed verdict or otherwise in accordance with the applicable practice without, submission to the jury, or by judgment notwithstanding the verdict. By such direction of the trial the result is saved from the mischance of speculation over legally unfounded claims.”
Another statement of the test appears in Fischer Construction Co. v. Firemen’s Fund Insurance Co., supra at 275. There, it is stated that a directed verdict is justified if the proof is “so overwhelmingly preponderant in favor of the movant as to permit no other rational conclusion.”
In this jurisdiction, the test is stated in Carreira v. Territory, 40 Haw. 513, 517 (1954), a case involving a question of negligence, as follows:
“Where the facts are disputed and reasonable men might differ on the facts or the inferences which may be reasonably drawn from the facts, the question of negligence is left to the jury under proper instructions; but where there is no conflict from the evidence and but one inference can be drawn from the facts, it is the duty of the court to pass upon the question of negligence and proximate cause as questions of law.”
That test has been reiterated in Young v. Price, 47 Haw. 309, 313, 388 P.2d 203, 206 (1963), rehearing 48 Haw. 22, 24, 395 P.2d 365, 367 (1964).
In this case, the circuit court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss, stating that plaintiff’s attorney “was not lulled into security,” and that it “would like to make it * * * eminently clear that [the attorney] was remiss in not filing his complaint in time.”
Without going into the details of the showing made at the hearing on the motion to dismiss, I think that the proof was so overwhelmingly preponderant in favor of the de*590fendants as to permit no other rational" conclusion than that reached by the circuit court.
That the failure of plaintiff’s attorney to file the complaint in a timely manner was not due to being lulled into a feeling of security that the statute would not-be asserted is evident-from the fact that the filing-was done on March 2, 1965,.one day after the statute had run; from the attorney’s statement in his affidavit that, after his last discussion with the adjuster in the first week of January 1965, two months before the expiration of the period of limitation, he “was out of state for a period of three weeks and on the return thereof involved in his legislative duties”; and from his testimony that “in March 2nd we realized that the statute had run and filed the action on March 2, 1965.”