Pennwalt Corp. v. Nasios

• Decision Date: 01 September 1986
• Docket Number: No. 20,20
• Citation: 550 A.2d 1155,314 Md. 433
• Parties: , Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 12,021 PENNWALT CORPORATION v. Evangelia NASIOS et al. Misc.,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 433

314 Md. 433

550 A.2d 1155, Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 12,021

PENNWALT CORPORATION v. Evangelia NASIOS et al.

Misc. No. 20, Sept. Term, 1986.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Dec. 21, 1988.

James K. Archibald, Jeffrey A. Dunn, Maryruth Vollstedt and Venable, Baetjer & Howard, Baltimore, and Larry R. O'Neal, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Kansas City, Mo., all on the brief, for appellant.

Victor E. Schwartz, Liberty Mahshigian, Kathryn Kelly and Crowell & Moring, Bruce J. Brennan, Geoffrey R.W. Smith, on the brief, Washington, D.C., amicus curiae for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Ass'n.

Eugene J. Yannon, Bowie, Edward P. Camus, Riverdale, both on the brief, for appellees.

Michael A. Pretl, H. Robert Erwin, Jr. and Pretl & Erwin, P.A., on the brief, Baltimore, amicus curiae, for Maryland Trial Lawyers Ass'n, Inc.

Argued before ELDRIDGE, COLE, RODOWSKY, COUCH ^*, McAULIFFE, and ADKINS, JJ., and CHARLES E. ORTH, Jr., Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland (retired) Specially Assigned.

COLE, Judge.

In this case we are asked to determine when an action accrues in a medical products liability case. Pursuant to the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act, Maryland Code (1984), §§ 12-601 to 12-609 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland certified the following question of state law for our consideration.

Whether under the discovery rule, knowledge of the manufacturer's wrongdoing or of product defect is required, in addition to knowledge of possible causation, to trigger the statute of limitations in a medical products liability action.

We set forth the following facts to place the question presented in proper focus. On June 17, 1980, Evangelia Nasios was admitted to Holy Cross Hospital to deliver her second child. Prior to delivery, Nasios received an epidural injection of the anesthetic Nesacaine, a drug supplied by Pennwalt Corporation (Pennwalt). Within hours after childbirth it became apparent that Nasios was partially paralyzed. In an effort to remedy the paralysis, her doctors performed an emergency laminectomy the following day to correct an epidural hematoma. ¹ However, the surgery did not improve Nasios's condition. Five days later, a doctor at the hospital explained to Nasios that her prognosis was not bright and that the epidural anesthesia may have been the cause of her paralysis. ² Nasios hired an attorney shortly thereafter and began investigating her possible claims. On July 17, 1985, over five years after her injury, and after changing attorneys several times, Nasios filed a breach of warranty, negligence, and strict liability suit against Pennwalt. Pennwalt asserted that Nasios's claim was barred by limitations and moved for summary judgment.

Judge Ramsay, sitting for the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, summed up the crucial facts and his conclusions in the Certification Order. Judge Ramsay made clear that Nasios knew that Nesacaine was a possible cause of her paralysis more than three years before filing suit. Additionally, Nasios thoroughly investigated a possible claim against Pennwalt. Nevertheless, Judge Ramsay indicated that he could not conclude as a matter of law that Nasios had knowledge of the alleged manufacturer wrongdoing or product defect more than three years before filing suit. From the foregoing, Judge Ramsay concluded that if knowledge of possible causation is all that is required to trigger the running of the statute of limitations, then summary judgment should be granted in favor of the defendants. On the other hand, if the plaintiff must have knowledge of manufacturer wrongdoing or product defect before the statute of limitations begins to run, he suggested that summary judgment would be inappropriate. Judge Ramsay found that there was insufficient Maryland law on this point and therefore certified to us the question of whether knowledge of a manufacturer's wrongdoing or product defect is necessary to begin the running of the limitations period.

Pennwalt would have us answer the certified question with an unequivocal "no." It argues that a cause of action accrues when a potential plaintiff discovers his injury and there is no requirement that he need know of any manufacturer wrongdoing or product defect. Nasios would have us answer the certified question with a qualified "no." Nasios argues that the statute of limitations does not begin to run on a potential plaintiff until the injury, possible cause of the injury, and knowledge of probable wrongdoing are discovered or should have been discovered through reasonably diligent investigation. Nasios qualifies her "no" answer to the certified question because, in Nasios's view, the question requires express knowledge of wrongdoing, and Nasios recommends a standard of express or implied knowledge which contemplates knowledge of what a reasonably diligent investigation would have revealed.

The statute we must construe, Maryland Code (1984), § 5-101 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article, is rather straightforward: "A civil action at law shall be filed within three years from the date it accrues unless another provision of the Code provides a different period of time within which an action shall be commenced." The meaning of the key term "accrues," however, has not been legislatively defined, leaving the task of determining when an action accrues to the judiciary. Pierce v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 296 Md. 656, 664, 464 A.2d 1020, 1025 (1983). Before answering the question we face today we will review the purpose of statutes of limitations and our development of the area of the law.

I

Statutes of limitations have existed in Maryland and in other common law jurisdictions for hundreds of years. See Ferguson, The Statutes of Limitation Saving Statutes, 12-14 (1978). The statutes were enacted in an effort to balance the competing interests of potential plaintiffs, potential defendants, and the public. The statutory period provided by a statute of limitations represents a compromise of these interests and "reflects a policy decision regarding what constitutes an adequate period of time for a person of ordinary diligence to pursue his claim." Goldstein v. Potomac Electric Power Co., 285 Md. 673, 684, 404 A.2d 1064, 1069 (1979). By creating a limitations period, the legislature determined that a plaintiff should have only so long to bring his action before he is deemed to have waived his right to sue and to have acquiesced in the defendant's wrongdoing. Limitations statutes therefore are designed to (1) provide adequate time for diligent plaintiffs to file suit, (2) grant repose to defendants when plaintiffs have tarried for an unreasonable period of time, and (3) serve society by promoting judicial economy. Pierce, 296 Md. at 665, 464 A.2d at 1026.

Historically, the general rule in Maryland was that an action accrued on the date of the wrong. Hahn v. Claybrook, 130 Md. 179, 182, 100 A. 83 (1917). Under this rule it was irrelevant when the plaintiff discovered or should have discovered that the defendant had wronged him. The date of the wrong rule operated adequately in most tort actions because the plaintiff was aware of his injury and the defendant's wrongdoing almost immediately. Under those normal circumstances, the plaintiff had the full statutory period to pursue his claim.

We later recognized that the date of the wrong rule did not provide equitable results in all cases. Consequently, we created the "discovery rule" as an exception to the general rule. Although we first intimated our adoption of the discovery rule in Hahn, a medical malpractice case, it was not until Waldman v. Rohrbaugh, 241 Md. 137, 215 A.2d 825 (1966), that we clearly articulated the exception. ³ In Waldman, the plaintiff brought a medical malpractice action against the doctor who had operated on his fractured ankle. Three years passed, however, before the plaintiff discovered, by visiting another doctor, that the defendant had improperly treated the plaintiff's ankle. The defendant argued that the limitations period began to run when the wrong occurred, that is, on the date of the operation. The plaintiff, on the other hand, argued that his action did not accrue until "he knew or should have known that the pain and suffering in his ankle was due to improper surgical or medical treatment." Id. at 142, 215 A.2d at 829. (Emphasis added).

The Waldman Court declined the defendant's invitation to apply the date of the wrong rule and stated:

"The effect of ... [the date of the wrong rule] has frequently been to bar the plaintiff's claim not only before he sustained any perceptible harm, but before it was feasible for him to learn that the negligence had taken place.... Especially where the plaintiff is unqualified to ascertain the imperfection, as in the case of negligent performance of expert or professional services, it seems harsh to begin the period at the time of the defendant's act."

Id. at 140, 215 A.2d at 827 (quoting Developments in the Law--Statutes of Limitations, 63 Harv.L.Rev. 1177, 1201 (1950)).

Consequently, our predecessors in Waldman adopted the discovery rule as an exception to the date of the wrong rule in cases of medical malpractice. The Court noted that its newly adopted exception would not postpone accrual in many cases because a plaintiff would often know or have reason to know "soon after the wrongful act that he has been the victim of negligent medical care." Id. at 145, 215 A.2d at 830. In other cases, however, the Court recognized that it would be impossible for the average person, untrained in medicine, "to understand or appreciate that actionable harm has been done to him." Id. (Emphasis added). In those circumstances, the Court determined that the plaintiff should have the full statutory time to bring suit, and the action should accrue "the moment he knows or should know he has a cause of...