Starnes v. Cayouette

• Decision Date: 05 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. 911758,911758
• Citation: 244 Va. 202,419 S.E.2d 669
• Parties: Marjorie STARNES v. Robert L. CAYOUETTE. Record
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 669

419 S.E.2d 669

244 Va. 202

Marjorie STARNES v. Robert L. CAYOUETTE.

Record No. 911758.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

June 5, 1992.

Sylvia Clute, Richmond, for appellant.

Benjamin A. Williams, III, Newport News (L. Wallace Sink; Patten, Wornom & Watkins, on brief), for appellee.

Amicus Curiae: Virginians Aligned Against Sexual Assault, Virginians Against Domestic Violence (Darla Tarletz, Richmond, on brief).

Present: CARRICO, C.J., COMPTON, STEPHENSON, WHITING, LACY, KEENAN, JJ., and POFF, Senior Justice.

POFF, Senior Justice.

We awarded a plaintiff, an adult survivor of child abuse, an appeal to consider whether, as the trial court ruled, the expiration of the statute of limitations on her personal injury cause of action afforded the defendant a right protected by constitutional due process guarantees. The trial court dismissed the motion for judgment, and we look to the facts alleged in the pleadings. The chronology of events is vitally relevant to our analysis of the issue before us.

Plaintiff Marjorie Starnes was born in 1964. From the age of five until she became fourteen years old, Starnes was subjected to multiple acts of sexual abuse by defendant Robert L. Cayouette, a friend of Starnes' family and father of her best girl friend. The last such act occurred in 1978. Starnes became 18 years of age in 1982 and 20 in 1984.

According to the motion for judgment, the defendant "threatened the plaintiff with the alienation of her family if she revealed the abuse" and "often warned the plaintiff not to disclose the aforesaid abuse to anyone in a manner ... causing her to fear for her safety." Starnes alleged that "[a]s a result of the aforesaid abuse, the plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer and will suffer in the future, severe emotional harm ... [including] eating disorders, sleep disturbances, depression and anxiety attacks".

Starnes "first received communication from her psychologist regarding the causal connection between the childhood sexual abuse and problems she has since manifested in March, 1990." Asserting causes of action for assault, battery, sexual battery, rape, sodomy, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, Starnes filed a suit against Cayouette in July 1991. The defendant filed a plea invoking Code § 8.01-243 which imposes a time limitation of two years on personal injury actions.

In response, the plaintiff argued that her suit was timely filed under Acts 1991, c. 674, which became effective July 1, 1991. Clauses one and two of that Act provided as follows:

In actions for injury to the person, whatever the theory of recovery, resulting from sexual abuse occurring during the infancy or incompetency of the person, [the cause of action shall be deemed to accrue] when the fact of the injury and its causal connection to the sexual abuse is first communicated to the person by a licensed physician, psychologist, or clinical psychologist. However, no such action may be brought more than ten years after the later of (i) the last act by the same perpetrator which was part of a common scheme or plan of abuse or (ii) removal of the disability of infancy or incompetency.

As used in this subdivision, "sexual abuse" means sexual abuse as defined in subdivision 6 of § 18.2-67.10 and acts constituting rape, sodomy, inanimate object sexual penetration or sexual battery as defined in Article 7 ( § 18.2-61 et seq.) of Chapter 4 of Title 18.2.

[T]he provisions of subdivision 6 of § 8.01-249 shall apply to all actions filed on or after July 1, 1991, without regard to when the act upon which the claim is based occurred provided that no such claim which accrued prior to July 1, 1991, shall be barred by application of those provisions if it is filed within one year of the effective date of this act." ¹

In a final order entered October 2, 1991, the trial court ruled that both clauses of the Act violate constitutional due process guarantees to the extent it was the intent of the legislature (a) to retroactively apply the revised accrual provision ... in cases in which the statute of limitations has expired ... and (b) to create a twelve month period during which such cases could be filed regardless of when the cause of action accrued....

Based upon that ruling, the trial court sustained the defendant's plea of the statute of limitations. The court dismissed the plaintiff's motion for judgment, and we awarded her an appeal. ²

Preliminarily, we will summarize the statutory provisions pertinent to our inquiry as stated in the relevant sections of Code Title 8.01, Chapter 4, entitled "Limitations of Actions". Code § 8.01-243(A) provides that "every action for personal injuries, whatever the theory of recovery ... shall be brought within two years next after the cause of action shall have accrued." If a person's cause of action accrued during infancy, "the time during which he is within the age of minority shall not be counted as any part of the period within which the action must be brought". Code § 8.01-229(2)(a). A personal injury cause of action "shall be deemed to accrue and the prescribed limitation period shall begin to run from the date the injury is sustained ... and not when the resulting damage is discovered". Code § 8.01-230.

Now, we will review our opinions construing and applying these statutory provisions. In Locke v. Johns-Manville Corp., 221 Va. 951, 275 S.E.2d 900 (1981), we defined the word "injury" as used in the accrual statute to mean "positive, physical or mental hurt". Recognizing that a wrongful act and the resulting injury may, but need not, occur contemporaneously, we emphasized the statutory mandate that "a cause of action for personal injuries shall be deemed to accrue and the prescribed limitation period shall commence to run from the date the injury is sustained." Id. at 957, 275 S.E.2d at 904 (emphasis in original).

Pursuing our analysis of the statutory mandate in a recent case, we held that when a tort causes a contemporaneous personal injury, the fact that the victim suffered greater physical or mental hurt from that tort at a later date does not defer the date of accrual of the cause of action.

[W]hen any injury, though slight, is sustained as the consequence of an alleged wrong, the right of action for a personal injury accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run at once. See Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority v. Laburnum Construction Corp., 195 Va. 827, 838-39, 80 S.E.2d 574, 581 (1954). It is immaterial that all the damages resulting from the wrong may not have been sustained at the time of the negligent act; the running of the statute of limitations is not postponed by the fact that substantial damages do not occur until a later date. Id. at 839, 80 S.E.2d at 581.

Scarpa v. Melzig, 237 Va. 509, 512, 379 S.E.2d 307, 309 (1989).

As did the plaintiff in Scarpa, the infant plaintiff in this case suffered an injury in that "she experienced positive, physical or mental hurt" each time Cayouette committed a wrongful act against her "and her right of action accrued on that date." Id. at 513, 379 S.E.2d at 309-10. The last such act was committed in 1978. Because Starnes was 14 years old at that time, the statute of limitations was tolled until she attained her majority in 1982. The two-year time limitation expired in 1984. Starnes' suit was not filed until July 1991.

Hence, unless her right of action was revived by Acts 1991, c. 674, effective July 1, 1991, the judgment sustaining the defendant's plea of the statute of limitations must be affirmed. Whether it was validly revived depends upon whether the trial court erred in ruling that any retroactive application of the new rule of accrual defined in the Act and its provision creating a one-year "window of opportunity" for the filing of a suit irrespective of the date of accrual would violate the defendant's due process rights.

Stated more succinctly, the issue framed on this appeal is whether, upon the lapse of the time fixed in the statute of limitations and the tolling statute, the defendant acquired a right protected by due process guarantees. This is the issue upon which we reserved opinion in School Bd. of the City of Norfolk v. U.S. Gypsum, 234 Va. 32, 38 n. 4, 360 S.E.2d 325, 328 n. 4 (1987).

In 1885, that question was considered by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case involving a creditor's claim. Campbell v. Holt, 115 U.S. 620, 6 S.Ct. 209, 29 L.Ed. 483 (1885). By divided opinion, the Court ruled that, except in cases invoking the doctrine of prescription or adverse possession, the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution does not prohibit a state from enacting legislation that revives a creditor's remedy that had expired under the state's statute of limitations. In the opinion of the dissenting Justices, the debtor's right to the defense provided by the statutory bar was a species of "property" within the intendment of the clause which declares that "no State shall deprive any person of ... property without due process of law" and that, for purposes of that guarantee, the debtor's right became vested when the time limitation fixed by the state's statute of limitations had expired.

At the time Campbell was published, revision of the Virginia Code was in progress. In Kesterson v. Hill, 101 Va. 739, 744, 45 S.E. 288, 290 (1903), we noted that the revisors, favoring the view of the Campbell minority, had drafted the following language which became Code § 2936 of the Code of 1887:

If, after a right of action or remedy is barred by a statute of limitations, the statute be repealed, the bar of the statute as to such right or remedy shall not be deemed to be removed by such repeal.

Construing legislative intent in light of the history of the new statute, this Court endorsed the following rule then applied in "almost all the States of the Union in which the question ha[d] arisen":

[T]he right...