Court Opinion

ID: 9448588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:40:58.384109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:30.025025
License: Public Domain

JOSEPH C. HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
For the reasons hereafter stated, while I concur in the result reached by the majority and in the conclusions reached, that the question of when a tort claim accrues against the United States under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) is to be determined by federal law, and that under federal law the plaintiff’s suit was brought within the time allowed by Section 2401(b),1 I cannot concur in the characterization of the statutory two year period within *242which such a claim must be begun or forever barred as a “statute of limitations.”
It is established beyond question that Section 2401(b) is not a statute of limitations, within the legal definition of that term, Simon v. United States, 244 F.2d 703 (5th Cir., 1957); Compagnie Generale Transatlantique v. United States, 51 F.2d 1053 (2nd Cir., 1931); United States ex rel. Rauch v. Davis, 56 App. D.C. 46, 8 F.2d 907 (1925); but that it imposes as a jurisdictional prerequisite to recovery, a substantive condition, qualification, or restriction on both the right and remedy of the plaintiff and on the suability of the United States. Thus, the effect of the passage of more than two years after the claim accrues, without commencement of action upon it, is to leave the courts without jurisdiction of the action, whether the statute is pleaded or not, and to leave forever barred the right, the remedy, and the liability. Simon v. United States, supra; Hammond-Knowlton v. United States, 121 F.2d 192 (2nd Cir., 1941); Carpenter v. United States, 56 F.2d 829 (2nd Cir., 1932); Compagnie Generale Transatlantique v. United States, supra; United States ex rel. Rauch v. Davis, supra; Harrison v. The Beverly Lynn, 172 F.Supp. 719 (D.C.1959); Lomax v. United States, 155 F.Supp. 354 (E.D.Pa.1957); Florentine v. Landon, 114 F.Supp. 452 (S.D.Cal.1953) ; Foote v. Public Housing Commissioner of the United States, 107 F.Supp. 270 (W.D.Mich.1952); Stubbs v. United States, 21 F.Supp. 1007 (D.C.Md.1938).2
The importance, in the case at bar, of recognizing and maintaining the distinction between the nature of the provisions of Section 2401(b) and that of statutes of limitation generally is threefold: First, when Section 2401(b) is recognized for what it is, state limitations statutes and decisions with respect to them are seen to be without bearing or relevance to the choice of law problem; Second, recognition of the essential nature of Section 2401(b) as a statute creating a federal jursidictional condition precedent to the maintenance of a tort action against the United States makes it even clearer that the determination of when a claim accrues is, and should be, determined by federal law; Third, confusion of the two concepts, whether or not the same result be reached in the case at bar under either, can only lead to confusion of thought in subsequent cases where the distinction may be more crucial than it is here.
I, therefore, base my concurrence not on the reasoning of the majority opinion with respect to limitation statutes, but on the conclusion that the statute, having created a new right and liability, Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U.S. 61, 76 S.Ct. 122, 100 L.Ed. 48 (1955); Fitzgerald v. Pan American World Airways, 229 F.2d 499 (2nd Cir., 1956),3 should be reasonably construed so as not to deprive a beneficiary of the statute of the right conferred on any considerations pertaining to the construction of State statutes of limitation, and that the disposition made of the case below, based as it was on the authority of the Washington statute of limitations and the opinion of the Supreme Court of Washington in Lindquist v. Mullen, 45 Wash.2d 675, 277 P.2d 724 (1954) as to its construction was wrong and must be reversed.

. In addition to the cases cited by the majority in support of the rule that a claim for malpractice accrues against the Government when the claimant discovered, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the acts constituting the alleged malpractice. I would cite the case of Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta v. Atlanta Trust Co., 91 F. 2d 283, at page 286, 117 A.L.R. 1160 (5th Cir.1937) where it is stated:
“When the question is raised as to whether the action is barred by a statute of limitations, the true test to determine when the cause of action accrued is ‘to ascertain the time when the plaintiff could first have maintained his action to a successful result’.” (quoting from Mobley v. Murray County, 178 Ga. 388, 173 S.E. 680).

. See also The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 199, 7 S.Ct. 140, 30 L.Ed. 358 (1886); Finn v. United States, 123 U.S. 227, 8 S.Ct. 82, 31 L.Ed. 128 (1887); Reid v. United States, 211 U.S. 529, 29 S.Ct. 171, 53 L. Ed. 313 (1909); Davis v. L. L. Cohen & Co., Inc.. 268 U.S. 638, 45 S.Ct. 633, 69 L.Ed. 1129 (1925); Munro v. United States, 303 U.S. 36, 58 S.Ct. 421, 82 L.Ed. 633 (1938); Yankwich, Problems Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 9 F.R.D. 143 (1949).

. See also Heuser, Dalehite v. United States, A New Approach to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 7 Vand.L.Rev. 175 (1954).