Court Opinion

ID: 9544454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:55:41.690912+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:00.933629
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion recognizes that in our most recent eases we have held that where an action can be brought either in tort or in contract the applicable statute of limitations is to be determined on the basis of the predominant characteristic of the action. Thus in Bales for Food v. Poole, 246 Or 253, 424 P2d 892 (1967), we were called upon to decide whether an action for damages resulting from an engineer’s failure to provide for parldng facilities in designing a shopping center was governed by the two-year statute of limitations covering actions for negligent conduct, or the six-year statute limiting actions for breach of contract. We held that since the failure to exercise care was the “substance of the action,” the tort rather than the contract limitation period was applicable. While we noted a need for change in the law relating to the limitation of actions, the import of Bales is that the túne within which actions must be commenced cannot depend upon the form in which the action is brought.
The majority opinion refers to earlier cases such as Harper v. Interstate Brewery Co., 168 Or 26, 120 P2d 757 (1942); Wells v. Oldsmobile Co., 147 Or 687, 35 P2d 232 (1934); Sevier v. Mitchell, 72 Or 483, 142 P 780 (1914), which the court apparently regards as inconsistent with Bales. To the extent that those eases are inconsistent, I would have thought them overruled.
At any rate, the majority would distinguish Bales for Food and similar cases on the ground that a specific statute was not involved in those cases, *287whereas in the present ease the legislature has by the enactment of OES 72.7250 specifically provided the statute of limitations for actions for breach of warranty, including personal injury actions. But in Bales for Food there was also a statute providing the limitation period for contract actions, just as there is in OES 72.7250. We held that the tort limitation period was controlling because the gravamen of the action was tort rather than contract. If an action for personal injuries resulting from the use of a defective product is regarded as predominantly an action in tort, I fad to understand why the principle in Bales for Food does not apply simply because the Uniform Commercial Code made provision for limiting actions “for breach of any contract for sale * * :;;=.”
We have made it clear enough in our previous cases that a cause of action for personal injuries arising from a breach of the implied warranty of merchantabdity is in tort rather than in contract. In Wights v. Staff Jennings, 241 Or 301, 305, 405 P2d 624 (1965), we said:
“The word ‘warranty,’ with its connotation of contract has tended to obscure the fact that the liabdity imposed upon the seller for harm resulting from defective goods sold by him may rest entirely upon principles of tort law. Courts which see this have discarded the language of warranty and have described the seller’s obligation to furnish goods of merchantable quality in terms of the tort principle of strict liabdity.”①
The strict liabdity in tort which courts have imposed upon the seller of goods has been applied not only *288where there is privity between the plaintiff buyer and the defendant seller (a situation in which it could be said that a contractual relation exists), but also where there is no privity between plaintiff and defendant and therefore where liability cannot be predicated upon contract. This clearly demonstrates that the courts have not regarded the contractual feature of the transaction as the basis upon which the liability for injury resulting from a defective product should be imposed; liability is deemed to rest upon policy considerations peculiar to the law of torts. In a like manner, liability for personal injuries under the Uniform Commercial Code is fundamentally premised upon the breach of a duty of conduct imposed by law, and is subject to contractual bargaining, if at all, only to a limited extent. Taking this view, the action for personal injuries is not “an action for breach of [a] contract for sale” under ORS 72.7250.
The majority contends that the essential nature of an action for personal injuries cannot be the basis for selecting the appropriate limitation period because “the legislative intent is clear” that ORS 72.7250 should govern.
When the Code was enacted in Oregon, amendments and repealers of other statutes were also enacted in order that such statutes would be harmonized with Code provisions. This was in lieu of the general repealer provision recommended by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and the American Law Institute. It is significant in this regard that whereas ORS 12.080, the statute of limitations for contract actions, was amended to apply “except as otherwise provided in section 72.7250,” no similar amendment was made to ORS 12.110, the stat*289ute of limitations for injury to the person. Only OKS 12.080 was amended in keeping with the official comment to OKS 72.7250, which states that “[t]Ms Article takes sales contracts out of the general laws limiting the time for commencing contractual actions * * *.”②
Moreover, the application of OKS 12.110 to personal injury actions brought under the Code does not affront the purpose and policy underlying OKS 72.7250. The purpose of OKS 72.7250, as described in the comment thereto, is to provide a “uniform statute of limitations for sales contracts” which is compatible with “the normal commercial record keeping period” of business concerns. This court has taken the position that the enactment of the Code was not intended to preclude us from providing a remedy for personal injuries resulting from defective products under the theory of strict tort liability set out in Section 402A of the Kestatement (Second) of Torts. It would seem without question that an action brought on the theory of Section 402A would be governed by the two-year statute of limitations prescribed by OKS 12.110. But whereas an action under Section 72.7250 of the Uniform Commercial Code accrues “when tender of delivery is made,” an action under OKS 12.110 accrues when plaintiff discovers his injury. I assume that the *290majority would regard it as permissible for the plaintiff who has suffered personal injuries to allege in his complaint a cause of action for breach of “contract” under the Uniform Commercial Code and also a cause of action in strict liability under Section 402A. Since these alternatives are open to plaintiff, the reason which supports OES 72.7250 cannot be advanced by application of the Code’s limitation period because businesses will not be secure in disposing of their records four years after the sale of a product.
The majority concedes that under their interpretation of OES 72.7250, because a cause of action accrues when the seller tenders delivery of the goods, a plaintiff may be barred even before he is injured. This was the result reached in Mendel v. Pittsburg Plate Glass Co., 25 NY2d 340, 305 NYS2d 490, 253 NE2d 207, 211 (1969). In a dissenting opinion Justice Breitel expressed the view that “it is all but unthinkable that a person should be time-barred from prosecuting a cause of action before he ever had one.” We have expressed the same view in a different context. In Berry v. Branner, 245 Or 307, 312, 421 P2d 996 (1966), we said:
“* * * To say that a cause of action accrues to a person when she may maintain an action thereon and, at the same time, that it accrues before she has or can reasonably be expected to have knowledge of any wrong inflicted upon her is patently inconsistent and unrealistic. She cannot maintain an action before she knows she has one. To say to one who has been wronged, ‘You had a remedy, but before the wrong was ascertainable to you, the law stripped you of your remedy,’ makes a mockery of the law.”
The majority is not distressed by the fact that *291application of OES 72.7250 might bar an action before it arises because a plaintiff will nevertheless have two years, measured from the date he discovers his injury, in which to bring an action under Section 402A. However, the issue in the present case is the coverage of OES 72.7250 which the legislature intended when it enacted the Code in 1961, several years before this court adopted the theory of liability set out in Section 402A. While it is certainly within the province of the legislature to bar an action before it arises, we should not presume that the legislature intended such an unreasonable result unless the statute expressly so provides. In all events, under the reasoning of the majority and our recent decision in Markle v. Mulholland’s, Inc., 265 Or 259, 509 P2d 529 (1973), if by inadvertence or mistake a plaintiff couches his complaint in warranty terms, Ms action will be treated as falling within the Code and will be barred if his injury occurred more than four years after sale of the defective product.
As I stated previously, an action brought on the theory of Section 402A would undoubtedly be governed by the two-year statute of limitations prescribed by OES 12.110. In holding that an action brought under the commercial code for breach of an implied warranty of merchantability is barred four years after tender of delivery, the majority is saying, in effect, that the legislature intended to provide two different periods of limitation for a product causing personal injury, depending upon whether plaintiff decided to bring Ms action under the theory of Section 402 A or tinder the Code. It does not seem reasonable to assume that the availability of such a choice would have been countenanced by the legislature.
In support of its holding the majority points to *292those areas of law where, in the same fact situation, plaintiff may avail himself of different theories of recovery, and thereby have a choice of different statutes of limitation. This argument assumes that it is desirable to permit the plaintiff to have a choice of different theories on the same set of facts. That is a questionable assumption. In a recent article Professor Page Keeton, after pointing out that the courts have recognized both the theory of implied warranty and strict liability, makes the following comment:
“* * * Often, appellate courts have approved and authorized charges on both theories. Indeed a charge to the jury in a product liability case is often a conglomerate of three theories—negligence, implied warranty and strict liability in tort. Such charges are often unintelligible even to a sophisticated lawyer unless he has specialized on this subject, and certainly they are so to a lay jury. Our supreme courts should arrive at a theory of recovery to the exclusion of all others. Trial judges cannot under the present state of the law be criticized for being unable to submit a product liability case to a jury in a satisfactory manner. This situation emphasizes the fact that lack of efficiency in the administration of justice is often due to the complexities and ambiguities of the substantive law rather than to either court organization or court procedures. The fact that litigants, especially plaintiffs, want as a matter of tactics to employ ail three theories is not at all decisive.” Keeton, Product Liability and The Meaning of Defect, 5 St. Mary’s L J 30, 36 (1973).
I expressed a similar view in a specially concurring opinion in Maride v. Mulholland’s, Inc., supra. Since this court has seen fit to fashion its own theory of strict liability (Section 402A), it should treat it as the exclusive theory under which actions are brought for personal injuries resulting from defective products.
*293In passing, I would suggest that we eliminate the double-harreled character of other actions. In some areas we might well combine separate torts into a single category. Ripe for this treatment are nuisance and trespass to land, relied upon by the majority to support the argument for a choice of actions in the present case. The law of nuisance and trespass should be merged into a single action for the interference with one’s possessory interest in land.
It is my opinion that since our legislature has previously singled out personal injury actions as deserving of a particular limitation period, where the real basis of a claim is injury to the person that statute should apply. I would confine the Code limitation period to the usual contractual actions for the recovery of economic losses such as loss of profits, loss of bargain and the like, and would exclude from its coverage actions for personal injuries.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Holman, J., joins in this dissent.

 McGrath v. White Motor Corp., 258 Or 583, 593, 484 P2d 838 (1971); Heaton v. Ford Motor Co., 248 Or 467, 470, 435 P2d 806 (1967).

 The majority finds this evidence of legislative intent unpersuasive because twenty-seven years prior to the enactment of the Code this court held that an action for personal injuries resulting from the breach of a sales warranty was governed by the contract statute of limitations. Wells v. Oldsmobile Co., 147 Or 687, 35 P2d 232 (1934). The opinion in that case pointed out that warranty actions may sound either in tort or in contract. The court concluded that because an express rather than implied warranty was at issue, the contract limitation period would apply. Even if the legislature was aware of Wells when it enacted the Code, a fair reading of that decision could not support the conclusion that in every case warranty actions would be governed by the general contract statute.