Snyder v. Town Insulation, Inc.

• Decision Date: 15 June 1993
• Citation: 81 N.Y.2d 429,615 N.E.2d 999,599 N.Y.S.2d 515
• Parties: , 615 N.E.2d 999, Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 13,683 Pauline M. SNYDER et al., Appellants, v. TOWN INSULATION, INC., et al., Respondents, et al., Defendants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 515

599 N.Y.S.2d 515

81 N.Y.2d 429, 615 N.E.2d 999,

Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 13,683

Pauline M. SNYDER et al., Appellants, v. TOWN INSULATION, INC., et al., Respondents, et al., Defendants.

Court of Appeals of New York.

June 15, 1993.

Allen, Lippes & Shonn, Buffalo (Richard J. Lippes and Dana M. Louttit, of counsel), for appellants.

Brown & Kelly, Buffalo (William E. Nitterauer, of counsel), for Town Insulation, Inc., respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

SIMONS, Judge.

Plaintiffs seek to recover damages for injuries they allegedly sustained as a result of emissions from ureaformaldehyde foam insulation installed in their home in 1977. Defendants are the manufacturers and installers of the insulation. The sole issue is whether plaintiffs' causes of action for personal injuries are barred by the three-year Statute of Limitations. ¹ Because plaintiffs conceded before the trial court that the date of discovery rule of CPLR 214-c should not apply retroactively to their claims, resolution of that question turns on whether accrual under CPLR 214 is measured from the date of injury or from the date of last exposure. ² We agree with the courts below that the date of injury rule applies and that the causes of action were time-barred. We therefore affirm.

In February 1977, plaintiff Pauline Snyder contracted with defendant Town Insulation to have Rapco brand insulation installed at the home she shared with her son, plaintiff Richard Snyder. The insulation was blown into the walls of the house on March 29, 1977. Plaintiffs allege they began to experience respiratory problems and other symptoms of physical illness "about the date of installation". It was not until 1981, however, when the Federal Government banned the sale of ureaformaldehyde foam insulation, that the Snyders learned of the emissions and that health hazards were associated with the product. The State Department of Health later determined that formaldehyde was present in the air inside the Snyders' home. The insulation has not been removed from the dwelling.

On February 1, 1982, nearly five years after the Snyders had the insulation installed, a class action suit against defendants and other installers and manufacturers was commenced in Supreme Court, with the Snyders as members of the putative class of plaintiffs. Defendants do not challenge that the Statute of Limitations in the present action was tolled during the pendency of the class action. On July 19, 1985, Supreme Court denied class certification, and the Snyders instituted this action on December 19, 1986.

Defendants thereafter moved to dismiss the complaint asserting that the Snyders' causes of action for personal injury accrued on the date of injury and that the action was time-barred (CPLR 214[5]. Because the Snyders claimed in their pleadings that they were injured "about the date of installation", defendants contended that the limitations period expired in 1980, at the latest. The Snyders responded that under New York law a cause of action for personal injury arising from the injection, ingestion, or inhalation of a substance accrues on the date of last exposure. Under their theory, Richard Snyder's causes of action accrued in 1982 when he moved out, and Pauline Snyder's have not yet accrued because she continues to reside in the house and, presumably, be exposed to the emissions.

Supreme Court dismissed the complaint, holding that a cause of action for personal injury accrues on the date of injury. The Appellate Division affirmed but added in dicta that the date of last exposure rule applies only to employment-related torts. 177 A.D.2d 1011, 578 N.Y.S.2d 30. We agree with both courts that accrual is measured from the date of injury. We find no basis in our decisions, however, for the distinction between injuries arising in the workplace and those arising elsewhere.

An action to recover damages for personal injuries must be commenced within three years from the date of accrual (CPLR 203[a]; 214[5]; but see, 214-c). As a general proposition, the cause of action does not accrue until an injury is sustained (Schmidt v. Merchants Desp. Transp. Co., 270 N.Y. 287, 300-301, 200 N.E. 824; accord, Kronos, Inc. v. AVX Corp., 81 N.Y.2d 90, 595 N.Y.S.2d 931, 612 N.E.2d 289; see generally, Siegel, NY Prac § 40, at 47 [2d ed]. Stated another way, accrual occurs when the claim becomes enforceable, i.e., when all elements of the tort can be truthfully alleged in a complaint (Aetna Life & Cas. Co. v. Nelson, 67 N.Y.2d 169, 175, 501 N.Y.S.2d 313, 492 N.E.2d 386; Jacobus v. Colgate, 217 N.Y. 235, 245 111 N.E. 837; Roldan v. Allstate Ins. Co., 149 A.D.2d 20, 26, 544 N.Y.S.2d 359). The straightforward application of these principles leads to the conclusion that plaintiffs' causes of action accrued on the date they were first injured. At that moment, all elements of the tort could be truthfully alleged, and they had a colorable claim against defendants.

Plaintiffs contend, however, that our Court has applied a different rule in so-called "toxic tort" cases, where the injury results from injection, ingestion, or inhalation of a substance. In such cases, plaintiffs assert, accrual is marked from the date of last exposure. To support their position, they rely on a statement made in Martin v. Edwards Labs., 60 N.Y.2d 417, 469 N.Y.S.2d 923, 457 N.E.2d 1150 and our decisions in four earlier cases: Matter of Steinhardt v. Johns-Manville Corp., 54 N.Y.2d 1008, 446 N.Y.S.2d 244, 430 N.E.2d 1297, cert. denied 456 U.S. 967, 102 S.Ct. 2226, 72 L.Ed.2d 840; Thornton v. Roosevelt Hosp., 47 N.Y.2d 780, 417 N.Y.S.2d 920, 391 N.E.2d 1002; Schwartz v. Heyden Newport Chem. Corp., 12 N.Y.2d 212, 237 N.Y.S.2d 714, 188 N.E.2d 142 remittitur amended 12 N.Y.2d 1073, 239 N.Y.S.2d 896, 190 N.E.2d 253, cert. denied 374 U.S. 808, 83 S.Ct. 1697, 10 L.Ed.2d 1032; and Schmidt v. Merchants Desp. Transp. Co., supra.

There are Appellate Division decisions construing these cases as establishing a date of last exposure rule (see, e.g., Cornell v. Exxon Corp., 162 A.D.2d 892, 558 N.Y.S.2d 647; Riley v. State of New York, 105 A.D.2d 1104, 482 N.Y.S.2d 626; Askey v. Occidental Chem. Corp., 102 A.D.2d 130, 477 N.Y.S.2d 242), but neither Martin nor any of the cited decisions of this Court have done so. For more than a half a century, our cases have uniformly held that such causes of action accrue upon injury.

Indeed, none of the five cases relied upon by plaintiffs dealt with the issue of whether the date of injury or the date of last exposure should mark accrual. They posed the distinctly different question of how accrual should be determined when an injury was latent and went undiscovered until long after exposure.

In Schmidt, a worker commenced a negligence action against his employer, alleging that inhalation of dust on the job resulted in lung disease several years later. He argued that accrual should be marked from the date of the onset of the disease (270 N.Y. 287, 300, 200 N.E. 824, supra ). We rejected that proposition and restated the traditional rule: "There can be no doubt that a cause of action accrues only when the forces wrongfully put in motion produce injury" (id., at 300, 200 N.E. 824). Disease was a consequence of the injury, we said, not the injury itself, and the injury was complete at the moment the dust was inhaled even though plaintiff may not have been aware of it then (at 301, 200 N.E. 824). Giving the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt that dust inhalation--and thus injury--might have occurred on the last day of his employment, we noted that his employment had ceased more than three years before. Therefore, under any possible view of the evidence, his cause of action was time-barred. Because the parties did not address whether accrual may actually have occurred before the last day, the Court had no need to decide whether the date of injury or the date of last exposure marked the date of accrual.

Nor was the issue raised in Schwartz v. Heyden Newport Chem. Corp., 12 N.Y.2d 212, 237 N.Y.S.2d 714, 188 N.E.2d 142, supra. There, in fact, plaintiff had only a single exposure to the harmful substance. The question in Schwartz was whether a discovery rule should apply to a claim that the harm caused by a substance taken at a hospital in 1944 first became apparent 13 years later when cancer was discovered. We once again stated the established rule: "[T]he action accrues only when there is some actual deterioration of a plaintiff's bodily structure" (at 217, 237 N.Y.S.2d 714, 188 N.E.2d 142). This, we concluded, occurred at the time the substance was introduced into plaintiff's body. We declined to adopt a discovery rule, and we reiterated that position in Thornton v. Roosevelt Hosp., 47 N.Y.2d 780, 417 N.Y.S.2d 920, 391 N.E.2d 1002, supra, which addressed the same legal issue. Thus none of the earlier cases supports plaintiffs, and their position ultimately rests on dicta in Matter of Steinhardt v. Johns-Manville Corp. and Martin v. Edwards Labs.

We first made an explicit, albeit passing, reference to the date of last exposure rule in Matter of Steinhardt v. Johns-Manville Corp., 54 N.Y.2d 1008, 446 N.Y.S.2d 244, 430 N.E.2d 1297, supra, a case involving employment-related exposure to asbestos. Once again, we declined to adopt a discovery rule and, in so doing, stated: "Plaintiffs now urge * * * that the Statutes of Limitations applicable to their cases should not run from the date of the last exposure to the invading substance, but rather from the date on which the...