Prokolkin v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 02 March 1976
• Citation: Prokolkin v. General Motors Corp., 170 Conn. 289, 365 A.2d 1180 (Conn. 1976)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Alexander PROKOLKIN v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Page 1180

365 A.2d 1180

170 Conn. 289

Alexander PROKOLKIN v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

March 2, 1976.

Wesley W. Horton and James A. Kane, Jr., Hartford, for appellant (plaintiff).

Robert P. Volpe, Hartford, with whom was Valentine J. Sacco, Hartford, for appellee (defendant).

Before LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, LONGO, MacDONALD and MULVEY, JJ.

MacDONALD, Associate Justice.

The plaintiff, who suffered personal injuries in an automobile accident and who also paid certain sums of money to settle the claims of passengers who suffered injuries in the same accident in the automobile owned and operated by him, seeks by this appeal to reinstate two jury verdicts which awarded him damages of $12,000 for his personal injuries and $18,375 by way of indemnification. Recovery in each instance was premised upon the strict products liability of the defendant, General Motors Corporation, the manufacturer of the automobile owned and operated by the plaintiff at the time of the accident. The trial court, holding that the actions were barred by the applicable statutes of limitations, rendered judgment for the defendant notwithstanding the verdicts and ordered a new trial for the claim for indemnification under the negligence count of the complaint on the ground that that particular cause of action had not been submitted to the jury. The facts, as set forth in the finding, are not in dispute, nor is any question raised as to the correctness of the court's charge or its rulings on evidence, and the principal issue for our determination is whether the court erred in holding that the plaintiff's claims, based on the theory of strict products liability, were barred by our statutes of limitations.

The action arose out of a two-car collision which occurred in Canton on October 14, 1961, at which time the plaintiff was driving a Chevrolet Corvette which the defendant had manufactured and sold to a consumer in early 1959 and which the plaintiff, in turn, had purchased as a second-hand car in March, 1960. The plaintiff alleged and claimed to have proved that the defective manufacture of the limited slip differential in the 1959 Corvette caused it to skid upon a wet road surface into the left-hand lane of the highway where it was struck by an oncoming car. He also alleged and claimed to have proved that when the defendant discovered that the substitution of Belvil plates would improve the operation of the limited slip differential, it failed to notify the public in general or the purchasers of its 1959 Corvettes in particular that the 1959 or earlier model Corvettes should have the newer plates installed.

The plaintiff did not bring suit against the defendant until July 10, 1964, which was approximately five years after the sale of the Corvette to its original purchaser, four years after its purchase, second-hand, by the plaintiff, thirty-three months after the date of the accident, but less than one year after his settlement of a suit brought against him by the two injured passengers in his car. The first count of the original complaint sounded in implied warranty and the second count in negligence. Upon motion of the defendant, a summary judgment was rendered in its favor with respect to the plaintiff's personal injury claim on the negligence count on the ground that it was barred by § 52-584 of the General Statutes because it had not been commenced 'within one year from the date when the injury is first sustained or discovered,' ¹ and no appeal was taken from that judgment. On October 13, 1972, the plaintiff filed a motion for permission to add a third count to the complaint alleging a cause of action based upon strict products liability as expounded by this court in the case of Rossignol v. Danbury School of Aeronautics, 154 Conn. 549, 227 A.2d 418. The defendant's objection to this motion was overruled and the addition of the new third count was permitted by the court on the theory that the products liability claim was 'simply a more recent development of the law pertaining to breach of warranty and that the amendment to the complaint adding the third count did not state a new cause of action.' ²

In each count of the amended complaint, the plaintiff sought relief for both personal injuries and indemnification for the sums paid by him in settlement of the suit brought against him by the passengers injured in his car, and, at trial, the court submitted only the third count of strict products liability to the jury but charged, without exception, that a verdict on this count would also determine the implied warranty count.

I

In the first of his two assignments of error, the plaintiff claims that the court erred in granting the defendant's motion to set aside the verdicts based on strict liability and to render judgment n.o.v. for the defendant on the ground that these actions were not, as ruled by the court, barred by § 52-577 of the Connecticut General Statutes, ³ claiming, in substance, a continuing course of conduct on the part of the defendant which tolled the running of the Statute of Limitations. Our previous decisions make it clear that § 52-577 states the limitation pertinent to a strict liability action. 'The three-year limitation of § 52-577 is applicable to all actions founded upon a tort which do not fall within those causes of action carved out of § 52-577 and enumerated in § 52-584 or another section.' Collens v. New Canaan Water Co., 155 Conn. 477, 491, 234 A.2d 825, 833. See Tuohey v. Martinjak, 119 Conn. 500, 506-507, 177 A. 721. The exact wording of the statute, barring the bringing of any action founded upon a tort 'but within three years from the date of the act or omission complained of,' pinpoints the basic question here as being just what actually constituted 'the act or omission complained of' in the plaintiff's strict liability count or, in other words, just when did the three-year Statute of Limitations commence to run against the plaintiff's strict liability cause of action?

The words 'act or omission complained of' are found not only in § 52-577 but also in § 52-584, previously cited, ⁴ the limitation statute for specific tort actions, more especially those based upon negligence. In adopting this specific language, our legislature distinguished Connecticut's statutes of limitations for torts from those of other jurisdictions, the majority of which begin to run only 'after the cause of action has accrued.' See 63 Am.Jur.2d, Products Liability, § 223, and 3 Frumer & Friedman, Products Liability § 39.01(2), wherein are emphasized the controlling effect of the precise wording of the Connecticut statutes of limitations, ⁵ with particular reference to the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Dincher v. Marlin Firearms Co., 2 Cir., 198 F.2d 821, 822-23, wherein, the majority (Chase and Augustus Hand Js.), in construing the exact wording of the statute under consideration, made the following observations which are particularly pertinent to our present discussion: 'Turning now to § 8324 (predecessor to § 52-584), it should be noticed that its forerunner, § 6015, Connecticut General Statutes (Revision 1930), limited the time within which actions could be brought to recover damages for injury to the person caused by negligence to one year 'from the date of the injury or neglect complained of' and that, effective July 1, 1935, the above quoted words were replaced with those of the present statute, 'from the date of the act or omission complained of.' This change is significant and undermines the plaintiff's argument that the period of limitations is still to be measured from 'the date of the injury' i.e., from the time the cause of action accrues. . . . It may also be noted by way of contrast that in other sections of the Connecticut limitations statute the words, 'after the right of action shall accrue' are used to fix the point of time from which the prescribed period of limitation is measured. . . . Of course, the act or omission complained of took place, at the latest, when the sale of the defective gun was complete . . . to put the gun on the market without using reasonable care to make sure that it would not cause harm to one who used it as it was to be expected that it would be used.' It should be pointed out that many of the authorities cited by the plaintiff for the contrary proposition involve statutes which specifically provide that the limitations on commencing actions on torts begin to run 'after the cause of action has accrued.' See, for example, Rosenau v. City of New Brunswick, 51 N.J. 130, 143, 238 A.2d 169.

Because of the distinction created in the Connecticut limitation statutes between the injury and the tortious conduct which caused it, it is, indeed, possible, on occasions, to bar an action even before the cause of action accrues. However, this court explicitly accepted that anomalous result in Vilcinskas v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 144 Conn. 170, 127 A.2d 814, holding that under the statute under discussion, the limitation of an action against the seller of an air rifle in violation of another statute commenced to run when the defendant sold the gun and not when the plaintiff sustained injury some two-and-one-half years later, expressly stating (p. 173, 127 A.2d p. 816): 'Clearly, therefore, the words 'act or omission complained of' in § 8324 (now § 52-584) are intended to mean something different from injury or damage. The date of the act or omission complained of is the date when the negligent conduct of the defendant occurs and is not the date when the plaintiff first sustains damage'; and even more specifically observing (pp. 174-75, 127 A.2d p. 816): 'There is no reason, constitutional or otherwise, which prevents the legislature from enacting a statute, such as § 8324, which starts the limitation on actions for negligence running from the date of 'the act or omission complained of,' even though at that date no...