Court Opinion

ID: 9738134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:43:23.805253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:03.913848
License: Public Domain

Liacos, J.
(dissenting, with whom Abrams, J., joins). I join my brother, Justice O’Connor, in his dissent to the court’s opinion as to certified question no. 2. I write separately to express my disagreement with the court’s view, as well as Justice O’Connor’s, as to the proper response to certified question no. 1.
The court today holds that the discovery rule is inapplicable to actions arising under the wrongful death statute, G. L. c. 229, § 2 (1986 ed.). I disagree. The result in this case is incongruent with our previous decisions and is fundamentally unfair.
In my view, this court should not engage in narrow and formalistic legal reasoning so as to deny the plaintiff the ability to bring suit. In the words of our sister court in Utah, such an approach places the law “in the untenable position of having created a remedy for the plaintiff[ ] and then barring [him] from exercising it before [he] had any practical opportunity to do so.” Myers v. McDonald, 635 P.2d 84, 87 (Utah 1981). Accord Eisenmann v. Cantor Bros., 567 F. Supp. 1347, 1352 (N.D. Ill. 1983), quoting Matter of Johns-Manville Asbestosis Cases, 511 F. Supp. 1235, 1238 (N.D. Ill. 1981) (“we would have the anomaly of an action [for wrongful death] being barred before the cause of action even arose”).
The thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion of the Supreme Court of Alaska in Hanebuth v. Bell Helicopter Int’l, 694 P.2d 143 (Alaska 1984), is more persuasive and compelling than *121the response our court gives to question no. I.1 The Alaska court, like our own, had, several years earlier, recognized a common law right of action for wrongful death and had allowed the statutory period of limitations for that action to be tolled. Haakanson v. Wakefield, 600 P.2d 1087 (Alaska 1979). See Gaudette v. Webb, 362 Mass. 60 (1972).2 In Hanebuth, supra at 145, the Alaska court rejected the contention that the use of “from death” rather than “accrual” language expressed a *122clear legislative intent to restrict such actions more severely than other tort actions. Indeed, the difference in language was “not necessarily significant because [in Haakanson] the application of the minor tolling rule was not barred by the ‘from death’ language.” Id. at 146. The Hanebuth court recognized that two key propositions flowed from Haakanson: first, that it is unnecessary narrowly to construe wrongful death statutes as being in derogation of common law;3 second, that wrongful death statutes merely deal with the form of remedy available. They do not bar the underlying right of action. Hanebuth, supra. The same conclusions apply under Gaudette.
In this context, the Alaska court concluded that the “discovery rule does apply to the death act because of the fundamental fairness of the rule and, like the minor tolling rule, because it is consistent with the purposes of the act.. . . The same reasoning, founded on basic justice, that has led us to adopt the discovery rule generally is present in wrongful death actions.” Hanebuth, supra at 146-147. The court noted that to hold otherwise would provide a windfall to tortfeasors whose conduct was so grievous as to cause death, while other tortfeasors, whose conduct fortuitously only caused injury, would be held liable. Id. at 147 & n.12.
We should decline, as did the Alaska court, to “attribute an intent to adopt such an irrational result to the legislature.” Id. at 147. Recently, this court found itself in a similar posture. We unanimously refused to “attribute to Congress an intention, and certainly not a clear intention, to dictate an absurd result.” Apkin v. Treasurer & Receiver Gen., 401 Mass. 427, 436 (1988) (holding Federal legislation, in absence of clear congressional intent, does not preempt State constitutional mandate for judges’ retirement at age seventy). We refused to read the Fed*123eral legislation at issue “in a vacuum,” whatever the legislation “may say if read literally.” Id. at 436, 435. I would hold legislation promulgated by the General Court to no lesser standard.
There is no clear legislative intent illuminating the boundaries of this statute. The court’s emphasis on the Legislature’s use of a nonaccrual style of language is misplaced. The wrongful death act is not a statute of repose that “limits the time within which an action may be brought and is not related to the accrual of any cause of action.” Klein v. Catalano, 386 Mass. 701, 702 (1982). Under such statutes “[t]he injury need not have occurred, much less have been discovered” within the time frame. Id. Statutes of repose evince a clear legislative intent for an absolute time bar.
The wrongful death act, however, affects only the form of the remedy and not the underlying right. Gaudette, supra at 71. It is a statute of limitations, which “normally governs the time within which legal proceedings must be commenced after the cause of action accrues.” Klein v. Catalano, supra. The traditional purpose of a statute of limitations is to “require the assertion of claims within a specified period of time after notice of the invasion of legal rights.” Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 170 (1949). While repose may be a goal of a limitations statute, previous cases adopting the discovery rule illustrate that the time bar is not absolute. See, e.g., Olsen v. Bell Tel. Laboratories, Inc., 388 Mass. 171, 174-175 (1983), and cases cited. When knowledge of the tortious wrong is, within the statutory time frame, unknown and unknowable, courts have applied a discovery rule to prevent legislation from affording merely “a delusive remedy.” Urie, supra at 169.
Where the Legislature intended an absolute time bar on certain actions, it has included language of repose. See, e.g., G. L. c. 260, §§ 2B, 4, and 4B (1986 ed.). In other instances, the benefits of a discovery rule have been conferred legislatively coupled with specific time limitations running from the date of discovery. See, e.g., G. L. c. 260, §§ 2C-2D (1986 ed.). In the absence of such legislative restrictions or limitations regarding G. L. c. 229, § 2, this court is free to apply the *124traditional judicial doctrine of a discovery rule. Application of the rule in this case would ensure that all plaintiffs for whom the Legislature intended to provide a remedy for tortiously caused wrongful deaths would be placed on an equal footing to commence an action upon notice of a wrong.
Finally, I observe that the court relies on several cases which support a contrary result. The court purports to rest its views on Grass v. Catamount Dev. Corp., 390 Mass. 551 (1983). In that case we commented that “[t]he Legislature might reasonably choose to put a wrongful death claimant on a different footing from one claiming injury . . . [because] [t]he latter claims are likely to be myriad in number . . . [while] [djeath claims, on the other hand, being drastic in the extreme and relatively infrequent, need not be constrained” in the same manner. Id. at 553, quoting Gallant v. Worcester, 383 Mass. 707, 714 (1981). This language does not support the court’s position because Grass and Gallant actually stand for the proposition that the Legislature has intended to afford liberal protection to claimants under the wrongful death act. Also, cases such as Klein, which the court cites, ante at 117, are cases in which we were interpreting statutes where clear-cut indications of legislative intent existed. Klein, as discussed above, involved a statute of repose. We thus believed that there was an indisputable legislative intent to abrogate a tort remedy after a time certain. See id. at 712. Similarly, in Eastern Mass. St. Ry. v. Trustees of the E. Mass. St. Ry., 254 Mass. 28, 31-33 (1925), this court concluded that, given the chronological development of the statutory provisions at issue, the Legislature could not have been thought to have intended certain seemingly broad grants of power in one provision so as to exempt the plaintiff from the licensure requirements of another provision. These cases are simply inapposite to the one at bar.
The plaintiff should not be barred from commencing a wrongful death action if he could not have known of the cause of action within the time limitation. Neither fairness nor a proper reading of legislative intent warrants such a conclusion. Accordingly, I dissent.

 The language of the Alaska wrongful death statute interpreted in Hanebuth, supra, Alaska Stat. § 09.55.580 (1987), is similar to the Massachusetts statute, providing in relevant part: “When the death of a person is caused by the wrongful act or omission of another, the personal representatives of the former may maintain an action therefor against the latter, if the former might have maintained an action, had the person lived, against the latter for an injury done by the same act or omission. The action shall be commenced within two years after the death . . . .”
General Laws c. 229, § 2 (1986 ed.), provides in relevant part: “A person who (1) by his negligence causes the death of a person, or (2) by willful, wanton or reckless act causes the death of a person under such circumstances that the deceased could have recovered damages for personal injuries if his death had not resulted . . . shall be liable in damages .... An action to recover damages under this section shall be commenced within three years from the date of death or within such time thereafter as is provided by section four, four B, nine or ten of chapter two hundred and sixty.”

 Haakanson, supra at 1092 n.11, relied, in part, on our decision in Gaudette, supra. There, we held that the right to recover for wrongful death is of common law origin. Consequently, the statutes governing wrongful death actions are no longer viewed as creating a right to recovery. Rather, they prescribe the form of suit, the damages recoverable, and, like any statute of limitations, the period of time within which actions may be commenced. Gaudette, supra at 71.
Our decision in Hallett v. Wrentham, 398 Mass. 550, 555 (1986), merely reaffirmed the distinction that “the death statute specifies the procedure and recovery” but does not create the underlying right of action. The court notes correctly Hallett’s emphasis that “Gaudette does not stand for the proposition that the requirements of the statute may be disregarded.” Id. We were referring, however, to the necessity for the action to be brought “by a personal representative on behalf of the designated categories of beneficiaries.” Id., quoting Gaudette, supra. The matter arose because the plaintiffs claimed that, under Gaudette, they could sue for wrongful death under the statute or proceed with independent, common law claims for their father’s death. We rejected the claim that Gaudette permitted the statutory procedures on filing to be ignored. Hallett in no way touched upon, nor limited, the instruction that the statute of limitations in G. L. c. 229, § 2, is to be construed like any other. Gaudette, supra at 71.

 Indeed, the court emphasized that the death statute should be construed liberally, since it is remedial in nature and “designed to compensate those who have suffered a direct loss because of the tortiously caused death of a benefactor.” Hanebuth, supraat 145. See Boston v. Hospital Transp. Servs., Inc., 6 Mass. App. Ct. 198, 201-202 (1978) (remedial legislation should be construed “so as to accomplish more fully the remedial purpose which prompted its passage”).