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Cikan v. ARCO Alaska12/16/2005
ntilla of contrary evidence." No special or higher burden attaches to claims of mental incompetency. To the contrary, as we pointed out in Adkins v. Nabors Alaska Drilling, Inc., " courts have interpreted liberally the type of mental condition that will toll a statute of limitations."
We noted in Adkins that the "general test [for incompetency] is whether a person could know or understand his legal rights sufficiently well to manage his personal affairs."
We then emphasized that this test becomes particularly lenient in the summary judgment context:
Plaintiffs have engaged in a surprising amount of activity and still have successfully claimed to be incompetent under a tolling statute. This is especially true where a court would be required to hold as a matter of law that the plaintiff was competent, such as in a summary judgment motion or motion on the pleadings. In at least three cases, plaintiffs have retained attorneys, commenced actions prior to the limitations period and claimed the protection of a tolling statute to add an additional party after the limitations period. A Michigan court noted that a plaintiff's mental condition "might be such that, while somewhat aware, he is only partially aware of the circumstances entitling him to maintain an action; such a person may be only partially or imperfectly able to assist his lawyer in prosecuting the action."
In granting ARCO's summary judgment motion, the superior court viewed Cikan's 1995 lawsuit against Kalamarides as conclusive evidence of competency. Yet as we stressed in this passage of Adkins, prior litigation and representation are not necessarily indicative of mental capacity, since awareness of an existing claim does not necessarily reflect a person's ability to assess and pursue it in a rational and effective manner.
Here, on its face, Cikan's complaint in the Kalamarides lawsuit evinced a clear understanding of the operation of the statute of limitations. This undeniably qualifies as strong, even compelling, evidence that Cikan met the Adkins test for competency; yet it is not necessarily conclusive evidence. If we credit Cikan's sworn account of the circumstances surrounding the prior lawsuit - as we must in reviewing the superior court's ruling on summary judgment - it offers an explanation consistent with her claim of mental disability. The comparative weakness of this competing evidence is not an issue to be weighed at summary judgment.
Nor does Dr. Wolf's failure to specifically say that Cikan was incompetent during the years immediately after her accident preclude his affidavit from qualifying as "more than a scintilla of contrary evidence" responding to ARCO's evidence of competency. In distinguishing Adkins and declining to find that case controlling here, the superior court emphasized that the medical experts' affidavits in Adkins were unequivocal. Yet Adkins did not rest its conclusion on the strength of that medical evidence. To the contrary, as already noted above, Adkins expressly emphasized that the test of mental incompetency is especially lenient at summary judgment.
Here, if accepted as true, Dr. Wolf's expert opinion certainly qualifies as substantial evidence pointing to the possibility of accident-induced mental incapacity; an unequivocal and time-specific diagnosis ruling out competency was not required to raise a genuine issue of disputed fact on the issue. Because Adkins expressly recognizes that Alaska's incompetency statute "does not require a formal finding of incompetency by a court," Adkins cannot fairly be read as suggesting that a formal finding of incompetency by a medical expert is necessary to raise a genuine issue of fact.
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