Dansie v. Anderson Lumber Co.
| Decision Date | 13 July 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 930068-CA,930068-CA |
| Citation | 878 P.2d 1155 |
| Parties | Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 13,974 Sheryl Lynne DANSIE, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. ANDERSON LUMBER CO.; Belwith International; Judson Pierson; E. Gregory Higley; Clearfield Realty, Inc., a Utah corporation; and Sanderson Sales, Defendants and Appellees. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
Reid Tateoka, Harry Caston, and Allan O. Walsh, Salt Lake City, for appellant.
William J. Hansen, and Mark L. Anderson, Salt Lake City, for appellees.
Before GREENWOOD, JACKSON and ORME, JJ.
Sheryl Lynne Dansie appeals the trial court's order granting Belwith International's motion to dismiss and Anderson Lumber Company's motion for summary judgment. Dansie argues that the trial court applied the wrong statute of limitations in barring her personal injury claim. We affirm.
In reviewing the trial court's grant of Belwith International's motion to dismiss, we accept the material allegations of the complaint as true and will affirm the trial court's decision only if it appears Dansie cannot prove any set of facts in support of her claim. Hansen v. Department of Fin. Insts., 858 P.2d 184, 185-86 (Utah App.1993). In reviewing the trial court's grant of Anderson Lumber Company's motion for summary judgment, we view the facts and the inferences drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to Dansie and will affirm only if Anderson Lumber is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Higgins v. Salt Lake County, 855 P.2d 231, 233 (Utah 1993).
The trial court held that Utah Code Ann. § 78-15-3 (1977), a part of the products liability statute that existed on the date of Dansie's injury, did not apply to her case. We review this determination as a question of law, employing a correction of error standard and affording the trial court no particular deference. Hansen, 858 P.2d at 186.
The material facts are not in dispute. In December of 1985, Judson Pierson, a general contractor, and E. Gregory Higley, President of Clearfield Realty, completed the construction of a house which was subsequently purchased by Dansie and her husband. As part of the construction, a handrail was installed along the stairway going from the main floor to the upper level of the home. While walking down the stairs only a few days after taking possession of the house, Dansie grasped the handrail for support, at which time a bracket securing the handrail broke, sending her falling down the stairs. As a result of the fall, Dansie suffered serious injuries. 1
On August 18, 1988, Dansie filed a complaint alleging that Pierson, Higley, and Clearfield Realty 2 negligently constructed the staircase by installing a defective bracket and breached the implied warranty of fitness in that the house was not fit for the purpose for which it was sold. Dansie immediately served interrogatories and a request for production of documents through which she sought the identities of the manufacturer of the bracket and the party who had sold it to Pierson and/or Higley.
Pierson and Higley signed their discovery answers on October 5, 1988, but failed to forward them to Dansie. Pierson's and Higley's failure to respond to these discovery requests eventually prompted Dansie to file a motion to compel, albeit not until over a year later. The trial court granted Dansie's motion and ordered Pierson and Higley to respond to the discovery requests by January 10, 1990.
On January 12, Dansie received Pierson's and Higley's discovery responses, which indicated that Pierson had purchased the bracket from Anderson Lumber, but these answers did not disclose the identity of the manufacturer. On April 17, 1990, Dansie filed her amended complaint naming Anderson Lumber Company as the seller of the allegedly defective bracket.
After serving Anderson Lumber with a set of interrogatories seeking the identity of the bracket's manufacturer and receiving answers thereto, Dansie discovered that Belwith International manufactured the allegedly defective bracket. On January 7, 1991, Dansie filed her second amended complaint naming Belwith International as the bracket's manufacturer. 3
In March and April of 1992, respectively, Belwith International and Anderson Lumber moved the trial court to dismiss Dansie's complaint against them. They contended that Dansie's claim was barred by the four-year statute of limitations found in Utah Code Ann. § 78-12-25(3) (1992), which governs all civil actions not covered by a more specific statute. Dansie opposed these motions and contended that her claim should not be dismissed because Utah Code Ann. § 78-15-3 (1977), the "statute of limitations" contained within the Product Liability Act existing on the date of her injury, entitled her to bring her action within six years from the date the defective product was purchased or ten years from the date the defective product was manufactured. Thus, even though the Utah Supreme Court ruled, mere weeks after the accident, that section 78-15-3 violated the "open courts" provision of the Utah Constitution, 4 see Berry ex rel. Berry v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 717 P.2d 670, 680 (Utah 1985), Dansie argued that the decision should not affect the limitation period governing her claim.
Belwith and Anderson responded that Dansie filed her claim after the former product liability statute was ruled unconstitutional by the Utah Supreme Court, on December 31, 1985, and before the current product liability statute of limitations was enacted by the Utah Legislature on April 24, 1989. 5 Belwith and Anderson contended that once the Court declared the prior statute unconstitutional, it became null and void and could not be applied "retroactively." See Malan v. Lewis, 693 P.2d 661, 676 (Utah 1984). Thus, Belwith and Anderson argued that the trial court should apply section 78-12-25(3), the general four-year statute, as the only viable statute of limitations available. See Millett v. Clark Clinic Corp., 609 P.2d 934, 936 (Utah 1980); Bateman v. Board of Examiners, 7 Utah 2d 221, 322 P.2d 381, 389 (1958).
The trial court granted appellees' motions, 6 reasoning that because the Utah Supreme Court declared section 78-15-3 unconstitutional prior to the time Dansie filed her initial complaint against Pierson and Higley, she could not rely on the "limitation" period contained in that section, and the four-year statute of limitations barred her action as of December 6, 1989. 7 Thus, the court determined that before Belwith and Anderson had been made parties to the action, Dansie's claims against each of them had become barred by the four-year statute of limitations. 8
Consistent with her position below, Dansie's primary contention on appeal is that the "statute of limitations" in effect at the time of her injury gave her a vested right to bring her action within six years of purchasing the allegedly defective bracket or within ten years from the date the bracket was manufactured. Appellees join the issue on Dansie's terms, debating the propriety of applying Utah Code Ann. § 78-15-3 (1977) many years after it had been judicially invalidated.
In addition, Dansie argues that even if the trial court was correct in its decision to apply the four-year statute of limitations, Belwith and Anderson should be estopped from benefiting from the four-year limitation period because Pierson and Higley hindered the discovery process and unjustly prevented Dansie from discovering appellees' identities within the limitation period. 9
"[s]tatutes of repose, such as section [78-15-3,] are different from statutes of limitations, although to some extent they serve the same ends." A statute of limitations requires a law suit to be filed within a specified period of time after a legal right has been violated.... On the other hand, statutes of repose are designed to bar actions after a specified period of time has run from the occurrence of some event other than the injury which gave rise to the claim. Since a statute of repose begins to run from a date unrelated to the injury (for example the date of purchase), it is not designed, as are statutes of limitations, to necessarily allow a "reasonable" time in which to file a lawsuit. A statute of repose might theoretically cut off a claim filed within the period allowed by the relevant statute of limitations.
Raithaus v. Saab-Scandia of America, Inc., 784 P.2d 1158, 1160 (Utah 1989) (quoting Berry ex rel. Berry v. Beech Aircraft, 717 P.2d 670, 672 (Utah 1985) (citations omitted)). See also Lee v. Gaufin, 867 P.2d 572, 575-76 (Utah 1993) (); Horton v. Goldminer's Daughter, 785 P.2d 1087, 1090 (Utah 1989) (same); Verlarde v. Board of Review, 831 P.2d 123, 125-26 (Utah App.1992) (same).
Furthermore, different objectives underlie these two types of statutes:
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