Andonagui v. May Department Stores Company4/13/2005
the one-year statute of limitations in effect at the time she allegedly sustained her injuries (§ 340, subd. (3)).
Citing Krupnick, supra, 115 Cal.App.4th 1026, defendant argues that section 335.1 has no retroactive application to plaintiff's action. Defendant correctly notes that when the Legislature enacted the two-year statute of limitations under section 335.1, it made its application retroactive only to actions brought by the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. (Stats. 2002, C. 448, § 1, subds. (c), (d); Code Civ. Proc., § 340.10, subds. (a) & (b); Krupnick, supra, 115 Cal.App.4th at p. 1029.) Defendant argues that by expressly making 335.1 retroactive to actions brought by victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Legislature intended to exclude all other retroactive applications of the statute. Application of section 335.1 to this case, however, is not, as defendant argues, a matter of retroactivity, and, thus, defendant's reliance on Krupnick, is unavailing.
In Krupnick, the plaintiff contended that section 335.1 "operated retroactively to revive his lapsed claim." (Krupnick, supra, 115 Cal.App.4th at p. 1028, italics added.) Plaintiff alleged he sustained injuries on January 26, 2001. (Id. at p. 1027.) He did not file his action until January 8, 2003. (Ibid.) Under the one-year statute of limitations applicable when he sustained his injuries, he had only until January 26, 2002 to file his complaint. (Id. at p. 1028.) The court held that section 335.1 did not apply to plaintiff's action because it was time-barred prior to the January 1, 2003 effective date of the new two-year statute, and section 335.1 did not operate retroactively to revive his already time-barred action. (Id. at pp. 1028-1029.) Here, by contrast, plaintiff allegedly sustained her injuries on December 15, 2002, and her claim was but 17 days old and not time-barred when section 335.1 became effective on January 1, 2003. Thus, unlike the plaintiff in Krupnick or the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 - whose claims would have been barred as of September 11, 2002 (i.e., before section 335.1 became effective) - plaintiff's action did not have to be revived through retroactive application of section 335.1.
Defendant also relies on Abreu v. Ramirez (C.D. Cal. 2003) 284 F.Supp.2d 1250, 1255 (Abreu), for the proposition that the "statute of limitations in effect at the time a claim accrues is the limitation applicable to that claim for all time." In Abreu, a magistrate judge held that the plaintiff did not benefit from the enlarged two-year limitations period in section 335.1 because his claim accrued before January 1, 2003. (Ibid.) Abreu is not persuasive authority. The court in Abreu failed to consider the holdings in Douglas, supra, 58 Cal.2d 462 and Mudd, supra, 30 Cal.2d 463 that a new statute that enlarges a statutory limitations period applies to actions that are not already barred by the original limitations period at the time the new statute goes into effect (Douglas, supra, 58 Cal.2d at p. 465; Mudd, supra, 30 Cal.2d at p. 468), and its holding is inconsistent with those cases.
Finally, defendant contends that Douglas, supra, 58 Cal.2d 462; Mudd, supra, 30 Cal.2d 463; and Evelyn, Inc. v. California Emp. Stab. Com. (1957) 48 Cal.2d 588 (cases on which plaintiff relies) should not apply here because they deal with "statutory liabilities" and not personal injury actions. Defendant does not cite any language in any of those cases that suggests that the Supreme Court intended its holdings to apply only to statutory liabilities and not to personal injury actions, and there is no justification for such a distinction. Therefore, the trial co
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