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Cary v. City of Madison6/27/1996
COURT OF APPEALS DECISION DATED AND RELEASED June 27, 1996
APPEAL from a judgment and an order of the circuit court for Dane County: STUART A. SCHWARTZ, Judge. Reversed.
Annette Cary appeals from a judgment dismissing her personal injury action against the City of Madison as untimely filed. We reverse the judgment.
A person claiming to have suffered injury as a result of the actions of a municipality or its agents may not commence an action to recover damages therefor unless he or she first files a claim with the municipality and the claim is denied. Sections 893.80(1)(a) and (b), Stats. This appeal concerns the special six-month statutory limitation period set by § 893.80(1)(b) for commencement of such actions after denial of the claim. The statute requires the notice of disallowance to be "served on the claimant by registered or certified mail," and states that " o action on claim ... may be brought after 6 months from the date of service of the notice ...."
Cary, who was injured when she slipped and fell on a sidewalk in the City of Madison, filed a claim for damages with the City. The City denied the claim and sent a notice of disallowance by certified mail to Cary's attorney, Gregory Dutch, on September 21, 1994. Dutch received it on either September 22 or 23, 1994. The action commenced on March 22, 1995--six months and one day after September 21, 1994, the date the disallowance notice was mailed.
The City moved to dismiss Cary's action as time-barred by §á893.80(1)(b), Stats. The trial court granted the motion, rejecting Cary's arguments that (1) service of the notice on a claimant's attorney may not be considered service "on the claimant" within the meaning of § 893.80(1)(b); and (2) §á801.15(5)(a), which extends the response time by three days where papers are served by mail, is applicable to the City's notice. Cary's appeal challenges those rulings.
The rulings concern the interpretation and application of statutes; as such, they raise questions of law which we decide independently, owing no deference to the trial court's Conclusions. State ex rel. Sielen v. Circuit Court for Milwaukee County, 176 Wis.2d 101, 106, 499 N.W.2d 657, 659 (1993). Based on that review, we conclude that the trial court erred when it decided that service on Cary's attorney complied with §á893.80(1)(b), Stats. Because the City's disallowance notice was never properly served under the statute, its six-month limitation is inapplicable and the three-year provision of the general personal-injury statute of limitations, §á893.54, Stats., applies. We reverse the judgment on this ground, and it is thus unnecessary to consider Cary's other argument.
As we have noted above, §á893.80(1)(b), Stats., requires that the notice of disallowance "shall be served on the claimant" by registered or certified mail. We recognized in Interest of Peter B., 184 Wis.2d 57, 516 N.W.2d 746 (Ct. App. 1994), as we have in many other cases, that in interpreting a statute, we do not look behind its plain and unambiguous language.
The sole purpose of determining the meaning of a statute is to ascertain the intent of the legislature. In determining legislative intent, we look to the plain language of the statute. If the statute is clear on its face, our inquiry as to the legislature's intent ends and we must simply apply the statute to the facts of the case.
Id. at 70-71, 516 N.W.2d at 752 (citation omitted). We see nothing unclear or ambiguous in the mandate of § 893.80(1)(b) that the notice be served "on the claimant." See Linstrom v. Christianson, 161 Wis.2d 635, 639, 469 N.W.2d 189, 190 (Ct. App. 1991) (stating the notice of claim and no
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