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Cikan v. ARCO Alaska12/16/2005
e action was time-barred. Pointing to the pleadings and circumstances surrounding Cikan's 1995 action against Kalamarides, the court found:
The . . . evidence demonstrates that she knew what her legal rights were and that she was taking steps to ensure that she filed a claim before the statute of limitations ran. In Cikan's December 15, 1995 complaint against Kalamarides, it is clear that she understood her rights as she stated that she made "diligent efforts" to retain another attorney as she knew the statute of limitations would run in December of 1993.
In the court's view, because Cikan clearly understood the statute of limitations in 1995, the various problems documented in the records and affidavits that she had filed did not suffice to raise an issue of fact concerning the timeliness of her claim. The court similarly found that Dr. Wolf's affidavit did not suffice to raise a genuine issue of material fact, emphasizing that "Dr. Wolf does not specifically state or raise an issue of fact that Cikan was mentally incompetent during the years 1991, 1992, 1993, or even through 1995. Nor does he state that she did not understand her legal rights." Finding no basis for tolling the statute of limitations under these facts, the court dismissed Cikan's claim.
Cikan appeals.
III. DISCUSSION
We review questions of summary judgment de novo. "We will affirm a grant of summary judgment if there are no genuine issues of material fact and if the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. When making this determination, we draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-movant." The moving party has the initial burden of offering admissible evidence showing both the absence of any genuine dispute of fact and the legal right to a judgment. Once the moving party has made a prima facie showing, the burden shifts to the non-moving party to produce "admissible evidence reasonably tending to dispute or contradict the movant's evidence." "To defeat a motion of summary judgment an adverse party may not rest upon mere allegations, but must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue of material fact. To create a genuine issue of material fact there must be more than a scintilla of contrary evidence."
These same ground rules apply in summary judgment cases involving statute-of-limitations defenses. But such cases present a procedural wrinkle: the task of interpreting and applying a statute of limitations traditionally falls within the province of the courts; so when a factual dispute precludes entry of summary judgment the dispute must ordinarily be resolved by the court at a preliminary evidentiary hearing in advance of trial.
Here, Cikan was injured in 1991 and filed suit against ARCO nearly nine years later, in 2000. Her claim would ordinarily be barred by the two-year filing limit for personal injury claims set out in AS 09.10.070(a). But Cikan claimed mental incompetency. Under AS 09.10.140(a), mental incompetency tolls the two-year filing limit.
In its motion for summary judgment, ARCO asserted that Cikan's suit was time-barred, arguing that she had presented no evidence of incompetency. ARCO also offered medical evidence indicating that Cikan appeared to be mentally competent in 1993. In addition, ARCO pointed to Cikan's lawsuit against Kalamarides, insisting that her pleadings in that case provided conclusive evidence that she was mentally competent after the accident.
Because "the evidentiary threshold necessary to preclude the entry of summary judgment is low," Cikan could defeat ARCO's summary judgment motion by presenting evidence of incompetency that amounted to more than a "sci
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