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Nixon v. State9/30/2005
ith reference to a legal principle.
The case of Ogg v. Robb illustrates this predominant view of our law dating back nearly a century. In Ogg, the plaintiff suffered burns on his arms as a result of x-rays taken by a doctor after he broke his wrist. Ogg, 181 Iowa at 147, 162 N.W. at 218. This event took place in 1901. Id. In 1912, the plaintiff developed cancer in his arm, resulting in amputation. Id. In 1915, he brought a negligence action against the doctor alleging the x-rays caused the cancer. Id., 162 N.W. at 219. After finding no evidence of fraudulent concealment of the tort by the physician, the court concluded the cause of action accrued at the time of the burn injury in 1901, and the action was therefore barred by the statute of limitations. Id. at 156, 162 N.W. at 220. The court emphasized that ignorance of the tort or the injury would not toll the statute of limitations until discovery. Id. at 156, 162 N.W. at 220-21.
At this time, the only exception to this rule involved cases in which the tortfeasor fraudulently concealed the cause of action from the injured person. See id. at 152, 162 N.W. at 219 ("' he statute does not begin to run, where a cause of action is fraudulently concealed, until the facts are discovered by plaintiff.'" (quoting Cole v. Charles City Nat'l Bank, 114 Iowa 632, 635, 87 N.W. 671, 672 (1901))); Dist. Township of Boomer v. French, 40 Iowa 601, 603 (1875) (" e find the rule to have been very well settled, under the English statute of limitations, that where the party against whom a cause of action existed in favor of another, by fraud or actual fraudulent concealment prevented such other from obtaining knowledge thereof, the statute would only commence to run from the time the right of action was discovered, or might, by the use of diligence, have been discovered." (Citations omitted.)). In that event, it was generally recognized that a cause of action was not considered to accrue until the facts were discovered. Ogg, 181 Iowa at 150, 162 N.W. at 219; Restatement (Second) of Torts § 899 cmt. e, at 444.
Around the same time as the law pertaining to the accrual of a cause of action was taking its early shape, our legislature began to carve its own exceptions to the application of the statute of limitations for specific types of cases. In 1860, the legislature first declared that actions for fraud would not accrue until "discovery of the fraud by the party aggrieved." Iowa Code § 2741 (1860). The legislature later added actions for trespass to property to the exception, see 1868 Iowa Acts ch. 167, § 9, and, still later, in 1873, added actions grounded on mistake, see Iowa Code § 2530 (1873). See Beerman v. Beerman, 225 Iowa 48, 51-52, 279 N.W. 449, 450-51 (1938) (tracing the evolution of what was then Iowa Code section 11010 (1935)). The statutory exceptions for actions based on fraud, mistake, and trespass to land remain today and are now codified in section 614.4.
Clearly, the legislature understood that a cause of action accrued even without knowledge of the injury under the general statute of limitations, and it sought to eliminate this harsh and "undiscriminating application of the statute of limitations" in three types of cases by creating the exceptions. Id. at 52, 279 N.W. at 451. In Beerman, we considered the legislation that added claims for mistake within the statutory exception to the rule that a claim accrued despite ignorance of the injury:
And it seems quite clear that this relief was intended for the one specific purpose of helping out of a dilemma those litigants who, had they appeared in court under the old law, could not have saved their rights by showing that they had not discovered the mistake within the
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