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Whaley v. Perkins7/21/2005
s in 1995, after they learned of the problem with their property. The Whaleys contend that, since the "gravamen" of their complaint is property damage, " he Whaleys were entitled to allege, and the trial court correctly instructed the jury to consider, their emotional distress as consequential damages caused by the injury to their property caused by the Appellants." The Whaleys cite the cases of Gunter v. Lab Corp. Of Am., 121 S.W.3d 636, 638 (Tenn. 2003) and Prescott v. Adams, 627 S.W.2d 134, 137 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1981) in support of the proposition that the statute of limitations for emotional distress should actually be governed by the three-year statute of limitations applicable to the cause of action for harm to property. In Gunter v. Lab Corp. Of Am., the plaintiff, Stanley Gunter, had been ordered to pay child support based on the results of a paternity test conducted by Laboratory Corporation of America ("LabCorp"), which indicated that there was a 99.94% chance that the plaintiff was father of the minor child. Gunter sued Labcorp, alleging that it negligently performed the paternity test and overstated the probability of paternity. He alleged negligence and breach of contract, and he "sought damages in the amount of the economic loss occasioned by the ... child support payments." Id. at 638. LabCorp alleged that the one-year statute of limitations applicable to personal injury claims applied, and had run prior to Gunter's filing of the complaint. Gunter claimed that the three-year statute of limitations for personal property tort actions should apply instead. The trial court ruled that the case was controlled by the one-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions; the Court of Appeals reversed, concluding that the three-year statute for injury to property was applicable. The Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals, stating that Gunter's alleged economic injury was an injury to property and thus fell under the three-year statute of limitations. The instant case differs from the Gunter facts in an important respect-in Gunter, the dispute over the applicable statute of limitations arose out of the ambiguity of the phrase, "injury to the person." The Court surveyed cases in which non-physical injuries, such as injury to reputation, fell under the rubric of "injuries to the person." The question, then, was whether an economic harm such as that suffered by Gunter was to be classified as an injury to the person or an injury to property. In the instant case, there is no such ambiguity. The gravamen of the emotional distress claim is uncontroversial; emotional distress is an injury to the person. Indeed, the case of Brown v. Dunstan, 409 S.W.2d 365 (1966), upon which the Supreme Court relied in Gunter, eloquently expresses the scope of "injuries to the person":
It is then our conclusion that the phrase `injuries to the person' as used in the instant statute is to be construed comprehensively and as contemplating its application to actions involving injuries that are other than physical. Its purpose is to include within that period of limitation actions brought for injuries resulting from invasions of rights that inhere in man as a rational being, that is, rights to which one is entitled by reason of being a person in the eyes of the law. Such rights, of course, are to be distinguished from those rights which accrue to an individual by reason of some peculiar status or by virtue of an interest created by contract or property.
Id. at 367. The second case cited by the Whaleys, Prescott v. Adams, 627 S.W.2d 134 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1982), involves causes of action that all pertain to injury to property: fraud in the inducement, misrepresentation, negligence in the design of an improvement to real
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