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Pappano v. Chevy Chase Bank8/30/2002
peal has been taken.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
As in any appeal from a grant of summary judgment, our review is to determine whether the trial court was legally correct. In assessing the rulings of the trial court, we recognize that "ordinary principles governing summary judgment . . . continue to apply when the issue on summary judgment is [the statute of] limitations[.]" Murphy v. Merzbacher, 346 Md. 525, 531 (1997) (quoting O'Hara v. Kovens, 305 Md. 280, 304 (1986)).
A summary judgment motion is not a substitute for trial. Rather it is used to dispose of cases when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The standard for appellate review of a trial court's grant of summary judgment is whether the trial judge was legally correct in his or her rulings. In granting a motion for summary judgment, the trial judge may not resolve factual disputes, but instead is limited to ruling on matters of law.... If any inferences may be drawn from the well-plead facts, the trial court must construe those inferences in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. The existence of a dispute as to some non-material fact will not defeat an otherwise properly supported motion for summary judgment, but if there is evidence upon which the jury could reasonably find for the non-moving party or material facts in dispute, the grant of summary judgment is improper. Okwa v. Harper, 360 Md. 161, 178 (2000) (citations omitted).
DISCUSSION
Did the trial court err in granting appellees' motion for summary judgment on the basis of the statute of limitations?
Maryland's statute of limitations, codified in Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc., § 5-101, provides that " civil action 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." Statutes of limitations are to be strictly construed. Murphy, supra, 346 Md. at 532. " bsent a legislative creation of an exception, we `will not allow any implied or equitable exception to be engrafted upon it.'" Id. at 532-33 (quoting Garay v. Overholtzer, 332 Md. 339, 359 (1993)). None of the exceptions referred to in § 5-101 is applicable to the present case. The elemental inquiry then becomes when did appellant know, or when should she have known, of the alleged failure of the Bank and the insurers to provide her and her late husband with the coverage for which they had bargained.
Section 5-101 provides guidance as to when a civil action is foreclosed, but does not define the word "accrue." "Absent such statutory definition, the question of when a cause of action accrues is left to judicial determination." Harig v. Johns-Manville Products Corp., 284 Md. 70, 75 (1978). That judicial determination, adopted incrementally over decades, has become known as the "discovery rule." Concisely stated, the discovery rule allows for a statute of limitations to be triggered when a plaintiff knows or, with the exercise of reasonable diligence, should have known, of the existence of an injury .
Speaking for the Court of Appeals in Mattlingly v. Hopkins, 254 Md. 88, 92-93 (1969), Judge Finan said that,
ike most general rules of law, those pertaining to "limitations" become less than profound when an attempt is made to apply them to specific cases. Much has been written as to when "limitations" should start to run. Some courts have held the cause of action accrues when the defendant commits his wrong, others when the plaintiff discovers the wrong, and still others have held that it does not accrue until the maturation of harm. Some
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