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Dickie v. Farmers Union Oil Co. of LaMoure5/25/2000
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota, the Honorable Rodney S. Webb, Chief Judge.
QUESTION ANSWERED.
Opinion of the Court by Neumann, Justice.
[ ] Invoking N.D.R.App.P. 47, the United States District Court, Southeastern Division for the District of North Dakota, certified the following question of law to this Court:
Is N.D. Cent. Code § 28-01.3-08, the North Dakota Product Liability Act Statute of Repose, unconstitutional under Article I, § 21 of the North Dakota Constitution because it denies to the plaintiffs in this action equal protection of the law?
Our answer is that N.D.C.C. § 28-01.3-08 creates an unconstitutional classification in violation of N.D. Const. art. I, § 21.
I.
[ ] A statement of facts relevant to this question is supplied by the Federal District Court order. On August 5, 1998, Lillian Maria Dickie, while employed by Peter Schockman on the Schockman farm, sustained serious burn injuries from an explosion and fire attributed to a gas leak through an underground pipe which connected gas storage tanks to an LP gas-fired grain dryer. On October 6, 1975, LaMoure Farmers Union Oil Company ("Farmers") sold and delivered black iron pipe to Orville Schockman, Peter Schockman's father. Farmers installed the pipe beneath the ground on the Schockman farm, connecting one storage tank to a grain dryer. Lillian Dickie and her husband, John Dickie, claim that when the pipe was installed by employees of Farmers it was not protected against corrosion and was, therefore, in violation of the National Fire Protection Association codes. After the August 5, 1998 explosion and fire, the pipe was exhumed and examined. A leak was found in the pipe. The Dickies claim corrosion caused the leak.
[ ] The Dickies commenced a products liability action against Farmers, seeking damages for injuries caused by the explosion. Farmers asserted the Dickies' claims are barred by the statute of repose under N.D.C.C. § 28-01.3-08. The Federal District Court, recognizing this Court had declared a prior version of a similar statute of repose unconstitutional, certified the foregoing question of law to this Court.
II.
[ ] Section 28-01.3-08, N.D.C.C., as enacted by the legislature in 1995, provides in relevant part:
28-01.3-08. Statute of limitation and repose.
. Except as provided in subsections 4 and 5, there may be no recovery of damages in a products liability action unless the injury, death, or property damage occurs within ten years of the date of initial purchase for use or consumption, or within eleven years of the date of manufacture of a product.
[ ] This Court, in Hanson v. Williams County, 389 N.W.2d 319, 328 (N.D. 1986), declared unconstitutional a substantively identical statute of repose, enacted by the 1979 legislature and codified at N.D.C.C. § 28- 01.1-02. In Hanson we applied an equal protection analysis to the 1979 statute of repose and determined it involved important substantive rights requiring an intermediate standard of review:
A statute of repose period begins to run from the occurrence of some event other than the event of an injury that gives rise to a cause of action and, therefore, bars a cause of action before the injury occurs. A person injured after the statutory period of repose is left without a remedy for the injury. Id. at 321.
While there are economic consequences for manufacturers and their insurers underlying the legislation in question, we believe our focus must be on the individuals affected. We are unwilling to view human life and safety as simply
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