 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Law Offices of Steven D. Smith v. Borg-Warner Security Corp.12/23/1999
ial fact, this court will affirm if the undisputed facts entitle the movant to judgment as a matter of law. This court views the facts in the light most favorable to the non-movant and draws all reasonable inferences in his or her favor.
At least one issue, whether the six- or two-year statute of limitations governs Smith's claims, poses a general question of law that this court reviews de novo, adopting the rule that best reflects precedent, reason, and policy. Smith notes that other issues in the case "require factual determinations." Some of his claims about standards of review for various issues are debatable. But this case was dismissed on summary judgment, and so this court's review of the dismissal as it relates to various issues does not depend on whether the issues are factual or legal. Even if some of them are factual, and so would be reviewed for clear error in a post-trial appeal, this court must in reviewing a summary judgment determine whether, on the undisputed facts viewed in the light most favorable to Smith, Borg-Warner was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
B. Could Smith Have Filed Suit Before the June 1994 Ruling that Reinstated the Estate's Claim Against Borg-Warner?
Smith makes two related arguments that both turn on the premise that he timely filed his suit because he could not have done so before the superior court had reinstated the estate's claim against Borg-Warner in June 1994. Smith argues that the grant of Rule 60(b) relief removed the bar of past judgments which held, as he reads them, that his negligence, and not Borg-Warner's fraud, had caused the estate to file suit late. He argues in terms of issue preclusion that he "could not ignore the prior adjudication " to that effect, and, in terms of the discovery rule, that he "could not have known the causal element [of his claims] before the prior adjudications were reversed."
1. Smith's discovery-rule argument is inadequately briefed.
Smith argues that (1) "a cause of action does not accrue until the plaintiff discovers or reasonably should discover the existence of all of the elements of his cause of action"; (2) one element of his cause of action is proximate cause, i.e., that Borg-Warner's conduct was the legal cause of the injury or damages suffered; and (3) the reinstatement of the estate's cause of action "supplied the necessary element of a [proximate] causal connection between the conduct of Borg-Warner/Facet and Smith's damages and eliminated Smith as the sole cause."
Because Smith has failed to adequately brief an argument for his novel proposition, we decline to consider it.
2. Was Smith collaterally estopped to argue that Borg-Warner's fraud had harmed him until the court relieved the estate from dismissal?
We find unpersuasive Smith's suggestion that, in the early 1990s, he thought that he was estopped from suing Borg-Warner for intentional torts because of what he perceived as a prior finding that he had been negligent. While we accept the portion of Smith's characterization of the prior final judgments that concerns his "negligence," we do not accept his claim that the dismissal of the estate's suit was based on merely his fault and not Borg-Warner's. Borg-Warner's fraudulent concealment and alleged secondary fraud in Palmer were not at issue below or on appeal in Palmer I. Smith concedes that the superior court denied the estate's 1990 Rule 60(b) motion without comment, and so the issue of the relative effect of his negligence and Borg-Warner's fraudulent concealment was not even arguably "decided." Moreover, Judge Hodges's dismissal of the Rule 60(b) motion, even had it arguably "decided" the issue of S
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Alaska Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|