Brown v. Lamb, No. 21686.

• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)
• Writing for the Court: PER CURIAM
• Citation: 414 F.2d 1210,134 US App. DC 314
• Parties: Russell Morton BROWN, Appellant, v. Edward Oliver LAMB and Dispatch, Inc., Appellees.
• Docket Number: No. 21686.
• Decision Date: 17 July 1969

134 US App. DC 314, 414 F.2d 1210 (1969)

Russell Morton BROWN, Appellant,
v.
Edward Oliver LAMB and Dispatch, Inc., Appellees.

No. 21686.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued January 10, 1968.

Decided July 17, 1969.

Mr. Milton M. Burke, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Mr. N. Meyer Baker, Washington, D. C., for appellees.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and McGOWAN and TAMM, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

In this suit to collect legal fees, the issue before us is the propriety of the trial court's grant of judgment in favor of appellees notwithstanding a jury verdict for appellant. The fees in question were billed on June 18, 1957, and there is no dispute that the applicable three-year statute of limitations, 12 D.C.Code § 301(7) (1967), would normally have run in June of 1960. Appellant, however, had successfully resisted a pretrial motion for summary judgment on representations that there were material issues of fact to be tried with reference to whether appellees were estopped from pressing the limitations defense. At the close of the trial, as to the conduct of which no procedural errors are alleged by appellant, the jury found for appellant. The trial court, on appellees' motion, entered judgment for them upon its finding that "the statute of limitations had run prior to the filing of this action, and that

414 F.2d 1211

no evidence was adduced at trial of a character requisite for taking this action out of the statute of limitations."

In this court appellant argues essentially that there was evidence in the record adequate to support a jury conclusion that appellees were estopped from claiming the shelter of the statute, and that the grant of judgment n. o. v. could only represent error by the court in either (1) its appraisal of the evidence by reference to an estoppel standard or (2) in concluding that as a matter of law the limitations statute does not under any circumstances yield to the estoppel principle. In this latter regard, appellant points to the fact that, in granting the judgment n. o. v., the trial court included in its authorities a citation of 28 D.C. Code § 3504 (1967).¹ It can be argued that that statute evinces a Congressional purpose to make a written promise or acknowledgment the exclusive escape route from the rigors of the limitations period. If this interpretation of section 3504 was at the root of the trial court's ruling, then the ruling was wrong, says appellant, because the interpretation is wrong.

The record presents some ambiguities with respect to the precise role played by section 3504 in the trial court's thinking. There are expressions in the transcript, before the submission of the case to the jury and in connection with appellees' motion for a directed verdict, which are subject to the inference that the court was preoccupied with the writing requirement of section 3504 as a possibly absolute command admitting of no other exceptions to the bar of the statute of limitations.² In its final disposition, however, the court's citation of that statute was accompanied by a reference to cases in this jurisdiction which indicated that the doctrine of equitable estoppel can prevent a suit from being barred by the statute of limitations.³ Most importantly,

414 F.2d 1212

the court's instruction to the jury enunciated the estoppel approach, making it clear that on a proper factual showing relevant to that principle appellant could be relieved of the prescriptive restraints even though there was no written undertaking or acknowledgment. It seems clear...