Court Opinion

ID: 9885695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:10:54.905081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.843876
License: Public Domain

*118Asch, J.
(dissenting). This is a products liability action in which plaintiff-appellant Karen Sue Besser seeks damages for personal injuries against three defendant pharmaceutical companies. The claim results from the ingestion by plaintiff’s mother, during pregnancy, of defendants’ drug, diethylstilbestrol (DES). The appeal presents to this court, for the first time, a novel issue pertaining to the recent Toxic Tort Revival Statute (L 1986, ch 682, § 4) passed by the Legislature of New York to afford a remedy to victims of five separate toxic substances, when claims, in many instances, were time barred even before some of those injured were even aware of their existence.
We are asked to decide whether the plaintiff, a New York resident at the time her action was commenced, is barred under the New York "borrowing statute” (CPLR 202) from taking advantage of the benefits conferred by the revival statute.
Plaintiff appeals from an order of the Supreme Court, New York County, which granted defendant Squibb’s cross motion for summary judgment, in which the other defendants had joined. The basis of this order was that the "borrowing statute” (CPLR 202) invoked a Statute of Limitations which barred the action. The same order also denied plaintiff’s motion to dismiss two of defendant Squibb’s affirmative defenses.
Plaintiff’s mother, while she was pregnant with plaintiff some 33 years ago, ingested DES, produced and marketed by defendants. She had no way of knowing that the consequences of such use might be catastrophic to her daughter, as yet unborn. Plaintiff was born in Pennsylvania, where she had been conceived and exposed to DES, in 1955. She became ill with cervical cancer in 1975, some 20 years later, in New Jersey, where she underwent surgery. A prior action she commenced on December 29, 1980, in New York, was dismissed as untimely. Thereafter, plaintiff brought the present action on August 6, 1986, as a resident of New York. While the record does not indicate when this residency began, the defendants cannot persuasively establish that plaintiff was only a resident of convenience for purposes of this action.
CPLR 202, New York’s borrowing statute, is a protective device for New York defendants to be raised so as to bar suits brought by foreign plaintiffs. In effect, CPLR 202 provides that with respect to a cause of action accruing outside of the State, *119commenced by a nonresident, a New York defendant will be able to invoke whichever Statute of Limitations has already expired, the foreign jurisdiction’s or New York’s. However, CPLR 202 preserves for the resident plaintiff the benefit, or the detriment, of New York’s Statute of Limitations.
In this case, it is undisputed that the action would be time barred in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And, ordinarily, under CPLR 202, plaintiff’s action would be time barred for all purposes if plaintiff was a nonresident. Fortunately for her, she is protected by her procedural status as a resident of New York.
In 1986, the Legislature passed the so-called revival statute (L 1986, ch 682, § 4). It revived for one year certain causes of action which had been time barred under New York law. It is not disputed that this action would be deemed timely commenced, then, if plaintiff could take advantage of the revival statute. Laws of 1986 (ch 682) reads in pertinent part: ''§ 4. Notwithstanding any other provision of law * * * every action for personal injury, injury to property or death caused by the latent effects of exposure to diethylstilbestrol, tungsten-carbide, asbestos, chlordane or polyvinylchloride upon or within the body or upon or within property which is barred as of the effective date of this act or which was dismissed prior to the effective date of this act solely because the applicable period of limitations has or had expired is hereby revived and an action thereon may be commenced provided such action is commenced within one year from the effective date of this act”.
Both the defendants and the plaintiff engage in substantial argument whether the revival statute addresses only New York claims barred by the New York Statute of Limitations, or whether it can revive an action time barred not by New York’s Statute of Limitations, but by that of foreign jurisdictions, pursuant to CPLR 202.
As noted, the revival statute commences with the qualifying language that it will apply “[notwithstanding any other provision of law”, and it then enumerates certain such other limiting provisions of law. Plaintiff contends that this statutory language is to be taken at face value and serves to nullify the application of CPLR 202 and any other Statute of Limitations. Defendants urge that such a literal interpretation misreads the legislative intent of the statute, which was to be narrowly construed; it was never intended to apply to nonresident causes of action, into which category they include the instant case.
*120The case law on this specific point is virtually a blank slate and, so, general principles of statutory construction will control.
Judge Breitel has stated with respect to statutory interpretation that "purpose cannot be a warrant to go beyond the language used. The language is a limitation on construction even as the purpose may be a liberalizing factor” (see, Matter of Smith [Great Am. Ins. Co.], 29 NY2d 116, 120). McKinney’s Consolidated Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 111 states, in pertinent part, that "the intent of the Legislature is the primary object * * *. While such intention is first to be sought from a literal reading of the act itself * * * giving such language its natural and obvious meaning * * * the literal meanings of words are not to be adhered to * * * to defeat the general purpose and manifest policy intended to be promoted.” (Emphasis added.) Further, "statutes are not to be read with literalness that destroys meaning, intention, purpose or beneficial end for which the statute has been designed.” (Ibid.) This permissiveness of departure from literal language, however, appears to address the situation where, in light of the statute’s explicit intent, the words, ill-chosen, make no sense in terms of application. (See, e.g., Matter of Caraballo v Community School Bd. Dist. 3, 49 NY2d 488.)
The purpose to be examined would be that of the revival statute, not the purpose of section 202. The objective of the revival statute appears to be to afford relief in tort to hapless victims of a tragedy which they had no part in making. To construe the statute in the way urged by the defendants would be to subvert its beneficial purposes, giving recognition to the increasing mobility of Americans, the complexity of determining pernicious consequences of modern "wonder drugs”, and the long-term consequences of the ingestion of medical drugs, the lethal consequences of which may not become apparent for a generation or more. Both the literal language "notwithstanding any other provision of law” as well as the "equity of the statute” (see, Heydon’s Case, 3 Coke Rep 7a, 76 Eng Rep 637 [Ex 1584]) support plaintiff’s position. To deny the plaintiff the right to seek legal redress in this case, because her mother lived in New Jersey at the time she took DES, would be the equivalent of the long-time rejected punishment of attainder and corruption of the blood by which the acts of the mother (which in this case were innocent) are used to penalize the daughter.
However, all the speculation as to whether plaintiff is to be *121afforded the beneficial effect of the revival statute is predicated on an erroneous premise. What is significant is that plaintiff commenced an earlier action in 1980, in New York, and after the enactment of the revival statute. The extensive discussion as to where the cause of action arose, or whether the revival statute protects a nonresident, is irrelevant. Although plaintiff was not a resident when the DES was ingested (since she was not yet born) nor when injury manifested itself, she commenced a prior action in New York on December 29, 1980, which, significantly, was then dismissed by application of New York’s Statute of Limitations. Consequently, when, on August 6, 1986, she brought a new action under the revival statute, she was then an "injured New Yorker” whose day in court in New York initially had been precluded for untimeliness and whose situation is expressly covered by the language of the statute: "[E]very action * * * which was dismissed * * * solely because the applicable period of limitations * * * had expired is hereby revived and an action thereon may be commenced * * * within one year”. The statutory language simply revives such claims which had been brought in New York courts and which had been dismissed in New York by operation of the Statute of Limitations; it does not appear to exclude those causes of action for toxic torts which had accrued in other forums. Hence, plaintiff herein should be accommodated by the statute, and deemed a New York resident, notwithstanding the lack of language which is explicit on this point.
The 1985 Supplementary Practice Commentaries to CPLR 202 (McLaughlin, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 7B, 1989 Pocket Part, at 41-42) relied upon by defendants actually supports the above conclusion. Citing Antone v General Motors Corp. (64 NY2d 20, 29), Judge McLaughlin notes that plaintiff’s domicile may not be relevant, although plaintiff’s residence in New York, even if it is not the domicile, would be the focus. The Antone case departs from the instant case in that it involved a car accident in Pennsylvania which necessarily was contemporaneous with the accrual of the cause of action. The whole nature of toxic torts, however, which the revival statute addressed, makes accrual of the cause of action a much more elastic concept. Defendant Upjohn even seems to concede that plaintiff "now apparently resides in New York”. Accordingly, the conclusion is warranted that the legislative purpose of the revival statute was to include the instant plaintiff within the class of persons to be accommodated by that statute. Defen*122dants’ conclusion that the legislative purpose was only to protect plaintiffs who were residents when the cause of action accrued or, in the alternative, that the Legislature intended that CPLR 202 act as a limiting device upon a party such as plaintiff, would not seem warranted. While not every literal nuance of a statute need be "slavishly” adhered to (McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 1, Statutes § 111), the clear meaning of the introductory phrase "[notwithstanding any other provision of law” seems not only clear on its face, but is not inconsistent with the body of the statute nor with the above legislative memoranda.
Hence, if plaintiff has been a resident, and it appears that such is the case (see, Antone v General Motors Corp., supra, at 30, for definition; see also, at 30, n 4, distinguishing Banasik v Reed Prentice Div., 28 NY2d 770, in which plaintiff did not have a residence at the time of her accident) insofar as she has "a significant connection * * * living there for some length of time during the course of a year” (Antone v General Motors Corp., at 30), the "hurdle” of CPLR 202 never arises and plaintiff is entitled to invoke the revival statute. If plaintiff’s residency is questionable (and one wishes that the record was clearer), then the facial reading of the revival statute would appear to nullify the limitation otherwise imposed by CPLR 202. By limiting this introductory language only to CPLR 214, the Statute of Limitations, and not extending it so as to nullify CPLR 202, the borrowing statute, the court below appears to have read in a statutory purpose which is not supported either by expressed language or by legislative memoranda.
Finally, while forum shopping is not to be encouraged, the public policy impact of reading the subject statutory language literally will be limited. The plaintiff may well be the only person in her category who brought an earlier action in New York, dismissed because of the Statute of Limitations, and who now proceeds under the revival statute. The revival statute opened only a one-year window period which has since closed, thereby limiting the class of plaintiffs which may take advantage of such an interpretation. That defendant Upjohn refers to two other such cases by the same trial court ought not be viewed as undermining such a conclusion.
Defendants argue that the Legislature did not intend to revive the claims of those plaintiffs whose causes of action accrued in States other than New York. Nothing persuasive has been cited, however, in the legislative history of the bill in *123support of this proposition. In fact, the best evidence to the contrary is the language of the statute itself that its provisions were to apply "[notwithstanding any other provision of law”.
If the Legislature intended that the borrowing statute should be applicable, why did it not say "[Notwithstanding any other provision of law except section 202 of the Civil Practice Law and Rules” instead of setting forth a blanket exclusion of any other provision of law? Certainly the Legislature was aware of the existence of the borrowing statute, and if it had so chosen, it could have made it clear that it was still to be applicable to revived claims. Defendants are, in effect, arguing that the Legislature should have barred claims accruing in other States, a judgment which is not for our courts to make, but for the Legislature.
It is unnecessary for this court to dwell on the meaning of the language of the revival statute ("[Notwithstanding any other provision of law”) which may or may not exclude the application of CPLR 202 with respect to nonresidents. Plaintiff in this case was a New York resident. It should be noted that at the time that plaintiff commenced her action against Squibb, she was a New York resident, having personally verified a complaint which set forth that "[plaintiff is a resident of the City of New York, Borough of Manhattan”. Thus, at the time that she commenced the action, she was indeed an "injured New Yorker”. In fact, when her prior action was dismissed, it had been on the basis of the application of New York’s Statute of Limitations. It was precisely for the purpose of affording relief to injured victims of toxic substances, like this plaintiff, that the Legislature enacted the revival statute. Thus, Senator Ronald B. Stafford, in a legislative memorandum dealing with the toxic torts/discovery Statute of Limitations, noted, inter alia: "This bill will provide relief to injured New Yorkers whose claims would otherwise be dismissed for untimeliness simply because they were unaware of the latent injuries until after the limitation period had expired” (1986 NY Legis Ann, at 287).
In this connection, defendants contend that our courts have narrowly construed the borrowing statute to apply only to those who were New York residents at the time the cause of action accrued (see, McLaughlin, Practice Commentaries, McKinney’s Cons Laws of NY, Book 7B, CPLR C202:2, at 82, citing Cellura v Cellura, 24 AD2d 59). Thus, according to defendants’ interpretation, a New York resident living here *124for the last 10 or 15 years could easily have been barred from bringing an action under the revival statute by application of the borrowing statute, assuming she was conceived and born in another State where her mother ingested the toxic material. Another resident for 10 or 15 years, whose mother lived in New York at the time of conception up to birth, would not be so barred. Such a narrow interpretation in this case would be a violation of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the US Constitution 14th Amendment, and the NY Constitution, article I, §§ 6 and 11. It would be a violation because it would create an arbitrary class of victims of toxic substances who were residents of New York when their actions were commenced, but because their mothers fortuitously were exposed to the substances many years earlier in another State, before these plaintiffs were ever born, were exempted from revival by such a happenstance. Such a result would turn a statute which is not unconstitutional on its face into a statute which is unconstitutional as applied to certain persons or under certain circumstances (see, e.g., United States v Grace, 461 US 171; Matter of Diocese of Rochester v Planning Bd., 1 NY2d 508).
The trial court also denied plaintiffs motion to dismiss defendants’ ninth and twelfth affirmative defenses. The ninth affirmative defense contends that the revival statute was unconstitutional. The twelfth affirmative defense asserts that the action is time barred by "the applicable statute of limitations”. If this court reverses and reinstates the action, then this affirmative defense becomes moot.
Accordingly, I would reverse the order and judgment appealed from, deny defendant’s cross motion for summary judgment and grant plaintiffs motion to dismiss the ninth and twelfth affirmative defenses.
Kupferman, P. J., and Wallach, J., concur with Sullivan, J; Asch, J., dissents in a separate opinion.
Order, Supreme Court, New York County, entered on July 10,1987, affirmed, without costs and without disbursements.