746 A.2d 236 | Conn. Super. Ct. | 1999
This case presents an issue of first impression in Connecticut; whether to toll the statute of limitations for actions brought against a manufacturer under the state's Product Liability Act, General Statutes §
The plaintiff, Vincent Ives, owns a gas station and garage in Washington, Connecticut. He claims that a socket wrench he purchased from defendant Michael Bowe broke and injured him on March 30, 1994. On February 26, 1997, the plaintiff filed a complaint against Bowe and the named defendant, NMTC, Inc. (NMTC), which he claimed had either manufactured the socket wrench or distributed it to Bowe. After NMTC brought a third party complaint seeking indemnification from the manufacturer of the socket wrench, White Industrial Tool, Inc. (White), the plaintiff amended his complaint on March 25, 1999, to add White as an original defendant. The fourth count of the amended complaint, brought against White under the Product Liability Act, alleges that the socket wrench was defective and unreasonably dangerous when sold. The fifth count, seeking *237
damages against White under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), General Statutes §
A court will grant summary judgment if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party; Elliott v.Waterbury,
In the present case, defendant White claims that the plaintiff's claims against it are barred by the statute of limitations because the plaintiff brought the case more than three years after being injured. The relevant statute of limitations for the product liability claim is General Statutes §
Deciding this issue is a matter of statutory construction. "As with any issue of statutory interpretation, our initial guide is the language of the operative statutory provisions." In re BabyZ.,
There is no dispute here that the plaintiff brought this action more than three years after sustaining and discovering his injuries. The plaintiff claims in his objection to White's motion for summary judgment that since he "was not capable of suing White prior to ascertaining who [it was] and what [its] connection to the subject product was," there are "genuine issues of material fact as to when the plaintiff's actionable harm against the defendant arose."
Applying the above criteria, the plaintiff argues that he did not suffer "actionable harm" at the hands of defendant White until he discovered "that the defendant's conduct caused his injury." The plaintiff argues that the date on which he discovered the essential elements of the cause of action, and, therefore, the proper date from which to measure the three year statute of limitations would be the date he first learned that White was the manufacturer of the socket wrench. The plaintiff thus relies on the so-called "discovery rule" to avoid the statute of limitations. As applied by some courts, that rule states that the limitations period starts to run not from the date the tortious act occurred (here, 1994) but from the date that a plaintiff discovers his injury and, in some jurisdictions, the identity of the party causing the injury (here, by manufacturing the socket wrench). *241
Although Connecticut does, by legislation, toll the product liability statute of limitations when a party fraudulently conceals its conduct; General Statutes §
The two prongs of the "actionable harm" test used by Connecticut courts to determine when the statute of limitations begins to run-when the plaintiff discovers (1) that he has been injured and (2) that the defendant's conduct caused this injury-are similar to that employed by many other jurisdictions, including some that do and some that do not toll the statute of limitations while the identity of the defendant is unknown. SeeMcDaniel v. LaSalle Ambulance Service, Inc.,
As the court explained in Catz, it is no coincidence that the legislature adopted a test used by other states *242
for the running of the statute of limitations and that our courts have interpreted our statute in accord with the decisions of other states. The Catz court noted that the legislature adopted discovery language when it enacted §
Because of that history, the Catz court then considered the analysis of other jurisdictions in adopting the *243 actionable harm test.2 As noted above, however, the various jurisdictions to which the Catz court looked do not agree on whether to apply the discovery rule to ascertaining the identity of the defendant. The courts of other states seem to take three approaches to this issue.
According to the Washington,3 Wisconsin and New Hampshire Supreme Courts, a majority of courts considering the issue have held that "`[a] cause of action *244
will not accrue under the discovery rule until the plaintiff discovers or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered not only that he has been injured but also that his injury may have been caused by the defendant's conduct.'"Borrello v. U.S. Oil Co., supra, 130 Wis.2d 410, quoting Raymondv. Eli Lilly Co.,
A significant number of courts, however (and this court has been unable to verify whether theirs is actually a "minority" view), apply the discovery rule to delay the accrual date of a cause of action while a plaintiff is unaware of its injury and its negligent cause, but not until a plaintiff learns the identity of the defendant. See, e.g., Jolly v. Eli Lilly Co.,
A third approach, allied to the second, rejects any delay in accrual of the cause of action, but allows plaintiffs to file an anonymous "John or Jane Doe" complaint naming a fictitious party during the period of limitations and then subjects plaintiffs to a standard of reasonableness in their efforts to learn the identity of the actual *245
tortfeasor.6 In Ayala v. Smith,
The various reasons cited by courts for applying the discovery rule to the identity of the defendant do not seem applicable to this court in the context of the present case. Some courts appear to view it as a matter of simple fairness that plaintiffs not lose their right to recover from a defendant when plaintiffs have in good faith sought to ascertain that party's identity; see, e.g., French v. Audley, Inc.,
Neither rationale seems applicable to the present case, however. There does not appear any unfairness to the defendant, who will still have his claim heard under a strict liability statute against the original seller and distributor, and any resources of the manufacturer White will be available to the plaintiff through the indemnification complaint. This is not a situation where a plaintiff was remediless until he knew who manufactured the product that injured him. The injuries that the plaintiff sustained were sufficient to put him on notice that his rights had been violated. Within the period of the statute of limitations he was able to identify and sue both the original seller and distributor.
The two parts of the "actionable harm" test are the plaintiff's discovery "that he has been injured" and "that the defendant's conduct caused that injury." As the conflicting cases in other jurisdictions construing similar terminology show, this language does not compel a decision either way as to whether to extend the discovery to include not just the injury but also the party causing the injury. The statutory language that this test explicates, however, refers to a plaintiff's discovery of "the injury, death or property damage." General Statutes §