Court Opinion

ID: 9472381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:58:30.554614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:54.261612
License: Public Domain

BAILEY ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring specially.
I have one problem with the court’s opinion, its assumption that the North Carolina tolling statute is procedural, such that the Massachusetts courts would not apply it under their choice of law rules. Rather, I see a substantive purpose, that there is no point to an employee having to proceed before the Industrial Commission and the courts at the same time; indeed, that there is a strong policy argument against it. I do not regard the tolling statute as a procedural favor to employees, but as a reflection of that policy; an important part of the statutory scheme, and a substantive benefit to employers, employees, and the state alike. In this case three years had run before the decision of the North Carolina Court of Appeals had affirmed the decision against plaintiff, and defendant, a Massachusetts company, has had the benefit of not being sued while that matter was pending. I do not find it at all clear that the Massachusetts court would have rejected the substantive purpose behind the statute. The fact that Massachusetts has no comparable tolling statute is not the answer.
This, however, is an unusual case, and not a matter of sufficient general importance to induce my pursuing it further unless I thought it would help this particular plaintiff, which I do not. A study of the North Carolina decisions persuades me that plaintiff’s suing in Massachusetts was based on a realization that he probably could not recover in that state, and that his only hope was to persuade us, somehow, to avoid that result. Regretfully, I cannot see a way properly to do so. Accordingly, I concur in the dismissal of the action.