Arnold v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

• Decision Date: 26 February 1997
• Docket Number: C.A. No. 95-399L.
• Citation: 956 F.Supp. 110
• Parties: Joseph ARNOLD and Claudette Arnold, Plaintiffs, v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY, Philip Morris Incorporated, and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, Defendants.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

956 F.Supp. 110

Joseph ARNOLD and Claudette Arnold, Plaintiffs, v. R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY, Philip Morris Incorporated, and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, Defendants.

C.A. No. 95-399L.

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island.

February 26, 1997.

Ralph R. Ryan, Pawtucket, RI, Guy J. Wells, E. Greenwich, RI, for Plaintiffs.

David A. Wollin, Adler, Pollock & Sheehan, Providence, RI, Leslie Wharton, Arnold & Porter, Washington, DC, for Deft. Philip Morris.

Michael P. DeFanti, Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, Providence, RI, for Deft. Brown & Williamson.

Joseph A. Kelly, Michael T. Sullivan, Carroll, Kelly & Murphy, Providence, RI, Donald J. Wood, Connarton, Wood & Callahan, Boston, MA, Richard G. Stuhan, Paul D. Koethe, Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Cleveland, OH, for Deft. R.J. Reynolds.

OPINION AND ORDER

LAGUEUX, Chief Judge.

This is a suit to recover damages stemming from plaintiff Joseph Arnold's life-long cigarette use. The matter is presently before the Court on a motion by defendants R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company,¹ Philip Morris Incorporated, and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation for summary judgment pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).² Because this action is barred by the Rhode Island statute of limitations, that motion is granted.

I. Background

The facts of this case paint a picture of an addiction far too familiar to today's society. Joseph Arnold, now age 53, began smoking cigarettes sometime between the ages of 13 and 15. Although he has tried to quit on a number of occasions, he has been unable to do so, at times smoking as many as four packs of cigarettes a day. In the early 1970's, Arnold began experiencing breathing problems and a chronic cough, and while he attributed both of these problems to smoking, he was unable to kick the habit. Arnold's respiratory condition deteriorated through the 1980's, and he was ultimately diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ("COPD") in April of 1988. During this entire 30-year period, physicians and others repeatedly warned Arnold of the dangers of cigarette smoking, and when he was diagnosed with COPD, his doctors told him that the disease was caused by his cigarette smoking. To this day, however, Arnold is still unable to stop smoking, even with the certain knowledge that doing so will exacerbate his illness and only hasten his death.

On July 28, 1995, Arnold filed this action against a number of cigarette manufacturers seeking to recover compensatory and punitive damages for the injuries sustained from his cigarette use. Arnold's wife, plaintiff Claudette Arnold, has also filed a claim for the loss of her husband's consortium. The complaint premises recovery on strict products liability, negligence, and defendants' failure to warn, and further alleges that defendants willfully misrepresented the true nature of the health risks associated with cigarette use, further contributing to Arnold's addiction and plaintiffs' injuries.

After conducting some initial discovery, defendants filed the present motion for summary judgment, asserting that this suit is barred by Rhode Island's three-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims, R.I.Gen.Laws § 9-1-14(b). In reply, plaintiffs contend that the discovery rule announced by the Rhode Island Supreme Court in Wilkinson v. Harrington, 104 R.I. 224, 243 A.2d 745 (1968) and Anthony v. Abbott Laboratories, 490 A.2d 43 (R.I.1985) should be extended to govern product liability cases based on cigarette use, and maintain that they commenced this action within three years of their discovery of the wrongful conduct of the cigarette companies. After hearing the arguments of counsel, the Court took the matter under advisement. The motion is now in order for decision.

II. Standard for Decision

Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure sets forth the standard for ruling on a motion for summary judgment:

The judgment sought shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.

The Court must view all facts and draw all inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. See Continental Cas. Co. v. Canadian Universal Ins. Co., 924 F.2d 370, 373 (1st Cir.1991). Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no dispute as to any material fact and only questions of law remain. See Blackie v. Maine, 75 F.3d 716, 721 (1st Cir.1996).

III. Discussion

R.I.Gen.Laws § 9-1-14(b) governs all tort suits to recover damages for personal injuries, regardless of the particular legal theory on which relief is sought.³ See Pirri v. Toledo Scale Corp., 619 A.2d 429, 430-31 (R.I.1993) (personal injury claim based on product liability, negligence, implied warranty, and failure to warn governed by § 9-1-14(b)). That section provides that all claims for personal injuries must be filed within three years of the accrual of the cause of action.⁴ The dispute in this case centers on when the cause of action accrued, and whether defendants concealed the existence of the cause of action so as to toll the running of the limitations period.

As a general rule, under Rhode Island law a cause of action for personal injury accrues at the time of injury. See Renaud v. Sigma-Aldrich Corp., 662 A.2d 711, 714 (R.I. 1995). However, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has recognized that for some factual settings, the operation of a "discovery rule" serves to set this accrual date at some time beyond the actual date of injury. The Court adopted such a rule for the first time in Wilkinson v. Harrington, 104 R.I. 224, 243 A.2d 745 (1968), where it held that a medical malpractice cause of action accrues when "the plaintiff discovers or, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have discovered, that he has sustained an injury as a result of the physician's negligent treatment." Id., 243 A.2d at 751.⁵ The Court later extended this principle to actions for property damage, so that the limitations period does not begin to run until "the evidence of injury to property, resulting from the negligent act upon which the action is based, is sufficiently significant to alert the injured party of the possibility of a defect." Lee v. Morin, 469 A.2d 358, 360 (R.I.1983) (latent construction defect in improvement to real property).

The discovery rule was given its most expansive application to date in Anthony v. Abbott Laboratories, 490 A.2d 43 (R.I.1985), where plaintiffs had suffered personal injuries as a result of exposure to the prescription drug diethylstilbestrol (DES). The Court noted that the nature of prescription drug product-related injuries distinguished those cases from the run-of-the-mill personal injury claim:

In the case of a drug product, it cannot be thought that because a person experiences the adverse effect of a particular drug, she will or should assume that it was the result of wrongful conduct on the part of the manufacturer; the normal reaction would be otherwise....

It is only later when a person learns that such effects are not an expected or predictable consequence of proper treatment that she can possibly be aware that she has an actionable claim against the manufacturer.

Id. at 47 (footnote omitted). For this reason, the Court concluded that for a drug product liability suit, the cause of action accrues not when the injury manifests itself, nor when the plaintiff becomes aware of a causal connection between the drug product and the injury, but instead at the time the plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should discover, some wrongdoing or wrongful conduct on the part of the drug manufacturer.⁶ Id. at 46-48.

Plaintiffs now ask this Court to extend the discovery rule of Anthony to cigarette product liability actions. In short, they argue that their cause of action did not accrue at the time the injury was discovered, nor at the time plaintiffs first had knowledge of the causal link between the injury and cigarettes. Instead, plaintiffs contend that the cause of action accrued — and the statute of limitations began to run — at the time they discovered, or should have discovered, the "wrongful conduct" of the cigarette companies.⁷ However, for a number of reasons, the Court declines plaintiffs' invitation to extend Anthony to cigarette product liability actions.

As an initial matter, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has been unwilling to extend the Anthony rule beyond the drug product liability context. In his dissent in Anthony, now-Chief Justice Weisberger cautioned that any further extension of the discovery rule "would subvert the entire purpose of a statute of limitations." Id. at 49 (Weisberger, J., dissenting). Heeding that warning, the Court has been "mindful not to interpret Anthony to extend far beyond the facts on which it was based." Benner v. J.H. Lynch & Sons, Inc., 641 A.2d 332, 337 (R.I.1994). In its most recent discussion of Anthony, the Court left no doubt that the rule announced therein applies solely to drug product liability cases, and not to product liability or personal injury cases generally:

Anthony applied only to drug product-liability actions. Here, the complaint is fashioned as a product-liability action with respect to a dangerous and defective container, not as a drug product-liability action.... [E]ven if the complaint had alleged that the acetic acid was defective in some manner, as far as we can determine acetic acid is not a drug, at least with respect to the manner in which plaintiff was exposed to its fumes. The reasonable-diligence standard and discovery rule enunciated in Anthony, therefore, have no application to the facts of the instant case.

Renaud, 662 A.2d at 716.

The same applies to the present action. Clearly, a cigarette is not a "drug product" as that term was used in Anthony. Unlike DES or other medications,...