Coots v. Southern Pac. Co.

• Decision Date: 07 March 1958
• Citation: 322 P.2d 460,49 Cal.2d 805
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: Maylon COOTS, Appellant, v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY, a corporation, Respondent. Sac. 6841.

Page 460

322 P.2d 460

49 Cal.2d 805

Maylon COOTS, Appellant, v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC COMPANY, a corporation, Respondent.

Sac. 6841.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

March 7, 1958.

Perkins & Carr and Thomas C. Perkins, Sacramento, for appellant.

Devlin, Diepenbrock & Wulff and Forrest A. Plant, Sacramento, for respondent.

CARTER, Justice.

This is an appear by plaintiff, Maylon Coots, from a judgment entered after trial by the court upon the defendant's motion, pursuant to section 597 of the Code of Civil Procedure, that the applicable statute of limitations as set forth in defendant's fourth special defense barred plaintiff's cause of action.

Plaintiff, an employee of defendant Southern Pacific Company, commenced his action under the provisions of the Federal Employers' Liability Act on October 11, 1954, to recover for personal injuries sustained by him. Section 56 of the act (45 U.S.C.A.) provides that no action can be maintained thereunder unless commenced within three years from the date the cause of action accrued.

Plaintiff began working in silver cyanide solution in defendant's plating department in either December, 1947, or January, 1948 Sometime in 1949 he noticed small blisters and pimples on his hands which caused itching. In July, 1949, he went to the Southern Pacific Hospital where one of defendant's doctors diagnosed the difficulty as 'Dermatitis, moderately severe, both hands.' The report, under date of July 8, 1949 (Defendant's Exhibit B), shows that plaintiff signed a statement which attributed the skin difficulty on his hands with 'Filtering cyanide solution which gets on hands causing a dermatitis' and 'Having hands in solution.' The report shows that the hands were 'dressed with lotion' and plaintiff was 'advised.' The condition of plaintiff's hands became 'real worse' in May or June of 1953; thereafter the condition spread to other parts of his body and became more severe and as of June, 1955, he was unable to work. On July 14, 1955, plaintiff was admitted to defendant's hospital. Apparently plaintiff was not advised to discontinue his work until he was discharged from defendant's hospital on September 12, 1955. On the report (under date of July 8, 1949) signed by defendant's doctor, appears the following question and answer: '11 Give probable duration of disability.' 'None.' (Emphasis added.)

Plaintiff contends that his cause of action did not accrue until he became disabled and unable to work in June, 1955. Defendant's position is that plaintiff's cause of action accrued when he first became award of his employment-connected injury. Both plaintiff and defendant rely on the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Urie v. Thompson, 337 U.S. 163, 69 S.Ct. 1018, 93 L.Ed. 1282, in support of their arguments.

In the Urie case the claimant sought relief under the Federal Employers' Liability Act for injury due to silicosis contracted during the course of his employment. The Supreme Court there rejected the defendant's argument that because the claimant had been exposed to silica dust for 31 years prior to the commencement of his action he was barred by the provisions of section 56, Title 45, of the United States Code. Defendant here argues that the court held that 'awareness' of the disease rather than 'disability' from it was the controlling factor in the Urie case. We do not so understand the Urie case.

The court in the Urie case had this to say (337 U.S. at page 168 et seq., 69 S.Ct. at page 1024):

'Urie filed suit on November 25, 1941. Under the terms of the then prevailing three-year statute of limitations (45 U.S.C.A. § 56), the court could not entertain the claim if Urie's 'cause of action accrued' before November 25, 1938. Respondent contends that Urie, having been exposed to silica dust since approximately 1910, must unwittingly have contracted silicosis long before 1938, and hence that his 'cause of action' must be deemed to have 'accrued' longer than three years before the institution of this action. Alternatively it may be argued that each inhalation of silica dust was a separate tort giving rise to a fresh 'cause of action,' and that Urie is therefore limited to a claim for inhalations between November 25, 1938, and the spring day in 1940 when he became incapacitated.

'In our view, however, neither of the outlined constructions of the statute of limitations can be sustained. For, if we assume that Congress intended to include occupational diseases in the category of injuries compensable under the Federal Employers' Liability and Boiler Inspection Acts (45 U.S.C.A. §§ 51 et seq., 22 et seq.), such mechanical analysis of the 'accrual' of petitioner's injury whether breath by breath, or at one unrecorded moment in the progress of the disease can only serve to thwart the congressional purpose.

'If Urie were held barred from prosecuting this action because he must be said, as a matter of law, to have contracted silicosis prior to November 25, 1938, it would be clear that the federal legislation afforded Urie only a de lusive remedy. It would mean that at some past moment in time, unknown and inherently unknowable even in retrospect, Urie was charged with knowledge of the slow and tragic disintegration of his lungs; under this view Urie's failure to diagnose within the applicable statute of limitations a disease whose symptoms had not yet obtruded on his consciousness would constitute waiver of his right to compensation at the ultimate day of discovery and disability.

'Nor can we accept the theory that each intake of dusty breath is a fresh 'cause of action.' In the present case, for example, application of such a rule would, arguably, limit petitioner's damages to that aggravation of his progressive injury traceable to the last eighteen months of his employment. Moreover petitioner would have been wholly barred from suit had he left the railroad, or merely been transferred to work involving no exposure to silica dust, more than three years before discovering the disease with which he was afflicted.

'We do not think the humane legislative plan intended such consequences to attach to blameless ignorance. Nor do we think those consequences can be reconciled with the traditional purposes of statutes of limitations, which conventionally require the assertion of claims within a specified period of time after notice of the invasion of legal rights. The record before us is clear that Urie became too ill to work in May of 1940 and that diagnosis of his condition was accomplished in the following weeks. There is no suggestion that Urie should have known he had silicosis at any earlier date. 'It follows that no specific date of contact with the substance can be charged with being the date of injury, inasmuch as the injurious consequences of the exposure are the product of a period of time rather than a point of time; consequently the afflicted employee can be held to be 'injured' only when the accumulated effects of the deleterious substance manifest themselves * * *.' Associated Indemnity Corp. v. Industrial Accident Commission, 124 Cal.App. 378, 381, 12 P.2d 1075, 1076. The quoted language, used in a state workmen's compensation case, seems to us applicable in every relevant particular to the construction of the federal statute of limitations with which we are here concerned.'

Defendant attaches much significance to the phrase 'blameless ignorance' used by the court and to the fact that only part of the sentence found in the California Industrial Accident Commission case was quoted by the court. If we were to construe the phrase 'blameless ignorance' as contended for by defendant we would have to hold as a matter of law that the 'moderately severe' dermatitis suffered by defendant in 1949 which was dressed by defendant's doctor with a 'lotion' and which was considered by the doctor as not disabling was notice to the plaintiff that his work would eventually cause permanent and total disability. As the Supreme Court of the United States said in the Urie case: 'Moreover petitioner would have been wholly barred from suit had he left the railroad, or merely been transferred to work involving no exposure to silica dust, more than three years before discovering the disease with which he was afflicted.' In this connection it is noteworthy that at no time prior to the time plaintiff became totally disabled from exposure to the solution with which he was working did defendant's doctor advise him to stop that particular work.

The balance of the quotation from the California case (124 Cal.App. at page 381, 12 P.2d at page 1076) is as follows: '(A)nd this would be when the employee becomes disabled and entitled to compensation, that is, when under the well-established meaning of the term 'disability,' as used in compensation law, there is a combination of partial or total physical incapacity and of inability to work.' Defendant argues that because the Supreme Court of the United States did not include in its quotation the entire sentence in the California decision that it did not mean to hold that the time of partial or total physical incapacity and inability to work was the time from which the statute of limitations began to run. It will be recalled that the Supreme Court approved the holding of the California court that 'the afflicted employee can be held to be 'injured' only when the accumulated effects of the deleterious substance manifest themselves. * * *' (Emphasis added.) As the Supreme Court said in the Urie case (337 U.S. at page 187, 69 S.Ct. at page 1033): 'We do not think the mere difference in the time required for different acts of negligence to take effect and disclose their harmful, disabling consequences would justify excluding the one type of injury from the Act's coverage or that such an exclusion would be consistent with its language, purposes, or unvarying standards of construction.' The Supreme Court in the Urie case specifically notes that it has...