Kelley v. Rinkle
| Decision Date | 21 January 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. B--5494,B--5494 |
| Citation | 532 S.W.2d 947 |
| Parties | George W. KELLEY, Petitioner, v. Roy RINKLE, Respondent. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
McMullen & Snyder, Stephen C. Porter and Waylon E. McMullen, Dallas, for petitioner.
Coke & Coke, Robert M. Roller, Dallas, for respondent.
George W. Kelley, petitioner, sued Roy Rinkle, respondent, for damages caused by Rinkle's filing of a report with Credit Bureau Services, Inc., which report stated that Kelley owed Rinkle $277.00 for medical and dental services rendered by Rinkle. Kelley alleged that the report was false and libelous and that Kelley did not owe Rinkle any money. The trial court granted Rinkle's motion for summary judgment on the ground that Kelley's suit was filed more than one year after his cause of action accrued and was therefore barred by the statute of limitations. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 5524 (1958). The Court of Civil Appeals has affirmed. 524 S.W.2d 806. We reverse the judgment and remand the cause to the trial court for a trial on the merits.
The proof submitted on summary judgment, construed in the light most favorable to petitioner, establishes the following facts: on March 13, 1973, Rinkle submitted a 'Voluntary Report' to Credit Bureau Services, Inc., a credit agency to which Rinkle was a subscriber, stating that George W. Kelley owed $277.00 to Rinkle on an account which was past due. Merle Young, an employee of Credit Bureau Services, states in her affidavit that this is the only report ever furnished by Rinkle on Kelley. In Kelley's affidavit he states that he had no knowledge of the existence of the report until August 29, 1973. Prior to that date and beginning during the months of April and May of 1973, Kelley states that he received several letters from various businesses to which he had applied for credit, informing him that he could not receive credit 'based upon information which those business firms had received from Credit Bureau Services . . ..' On August 29, 1973, Kelley went to Credit Bureau Services in order to discover the nature of the information which they had supplied to the businesses denying him credit; there he first learned of the report filed by Rinkle. Personnel at Credit Bureau Services also told him that the first request for information about his credit status was from Atlantic Richfield in April of 1973. Attached to Kelley's affidavit are two letters to Kelley, one from Phillips Petroleum Company dated April 30, 1973, and one from Woolf Brothers dated May 2, 1973, each informing Kelley that credit had been denied him based in part on information obtained from Credit Bureau Services. Kelley filed this suit against Rinkle on March 26, 1974, seeking $5,000.00 in actual damages plus exemplary damages and attorney's fees.
Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 5524 (1958) provides:
There shall be commenced and prosecuted within one year after the cause of action shall have accrued, and not afterward, all actions or suits in courts of the following description:
(1) Actions for malicious prosecution or for injuries done to the character or reputation of another by libel or slander. * * *
The question presented is: when did Kelley's cause of action accrue? 1
Assuming that the report is libelous, as we must for purposes of summary judgment, it must have been 'published' in order for petitioner to have a cause of action for resulting damages. 'Publication' is a word of art; it is defined in the Restatement, Torts § 577 (1938) as 'communication intentionally or by a negligent act to one other than the person defamed.' Thus, there was a publication of the report when respondent gave it to Credit Bureau Services on March 13, 1973. Respondent contends that petitioner's cause of action accrued on this date and was barred by limitations one year thereafter.
Petitioner urges us to adopt the 'discovery rule' in this case, whereby the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the injured party learns of, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have learned of, the injury or wrong giving rise to the cause of action. Texas decisions have adopted the discovery rule in limited types of cases: causes of action for fraud; actions for damage to plaintiff's land from water seepage; and, more recently, in certain malpractice cases. For a more complete discussion of the extent to which Texas has adopted the discovery rule, see Gaddis v. Smith, 417...
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Table of cases
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