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Allen v. the3/26/1992
Beverly Allen sued the State for paroling two men who later murdered her husband. The trial judge ruled on summary judgment that Allen's suit was barred by the 3-year statute of limitations and dismissed the action. Allen had argued that her cause of action was timely under the discovery rule. The Court of Appeals upheld the summary judgment dismissal, and we affirm. Allen did not file her suit within 3 years of the date when she should have discovered the essential elements of her cause of action.
On December 18, 1979, a masked gunman entered the Yorktown Restaurant in Tacoma and fired shots around the
room. Three people were killed, including Stephen Allen, and three others were injured. Stephen Allen and his wife, Beverly, had traveled to Tacoma from their home in Mount Vernon to attend a reunion of former co-workers from Western State Hospital.
Stephen's wife, Beverly, was not at the restaurant, but she was told of the murder later that night. When she talked to the police, they did not know who had fired the shots and thus could not tell her who was responsible for the murder.
Beverly Allen returned to the family home in Mount Vernon shortly thereafter, still not knowing who had killed her husband. She remained in contact with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office for the next few months, but all she could find out was that they were still working on the case and had not yet learned the gunman's identity. The record does not indicate how many times she called during this time period, although Beverly Allen herself says the contact during this period "wasn't . . . real intense". She stopped calling when the detective assigned to the case was transferred from the office. Beverly Allen believed the detective had not been replaced.
In May 1982, a Pierce County jury found John Frederick Anderson and Robert Stratton guilty of the Yorktown murders. At the time of the murder, Stratton and Anderson were on parole, having been conditionally discharged from supervision.
According to Beverly Allen and members of her family, they were unaware at this time that her husband's killers had been identified and convicted. Beverly Allen's father,
who also lives in Mount Vernon, maintains he did not learn of the convictions until late 1983, when he received in the mail a number of newspaper clippings describing the trial. Most of the articles contained in the record were printed in the Tacoma News Tribune. One short article, however, was written by a national wire service and appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a newspaper of general circulation around the Puget Sound region. Additionally, a longer article was in the Northwest Weekend, a newspaper apparently based in or around Mount Vernon. Three of the articles, including the article from the Northwest Weekend, stated both Stratton and Anderson had previous homicide convictions. The article in the Northwest Weekend indicated the reporter had unsuccessfully tried to contact Beverly Allen to get her reaction.
The record reflects Beverly Allen's father knew of the articles but decided not to show the articles to her because " he holidays have always been an especially difficult time for Bev and her family since Steve was killed." Clerk's Papers, at 36-37.
In March 1984, Beverly Allen's son, Troy, discovered the articles while visiting his grandparents. Troy showed the articles to an attorney in May 1984, who suggested to Troy there might be a cause of action against the State for the manner in which it paroled Steve Allen's killers.
Troy did not immediately tell his mother about the articles or his discussions with the attorney "beca
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