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Christensen v. Philip Morris USA Inc.6/8/2005
ble investigation would disclose is probably not sufficient if it would only show injury"); Young v. Medlantic Laboratory P'Ship, 125 Md. App. 299, 305-06, 312 (recognizing that, " nder the discovery rule, a cause of action accrues (thereby triggering the limitations period) when the patient discovers, or should have discovered, that he or she has a cause of action") and concluding "that the trial court erred in deciding, as a matter of law, that appellant's claim was barred by the statute of limitations," because "reasonable minds could differ over whether appellant should have further investigated into the matter sooner or more completely; whether she failed to exercise the degree of diligence that a reasonable person in her circumstance would have exercised; or whether any reasonable exercise of diligence under the circumstances would have led to an earlier discovery of appellee's breach of duty"), cert. denied, 354 Md. 572 (1999); see also United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111 (1979) (concluding, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, that the plaintiff's negligence claim accrued when plaintiff knew of both the existence of the harm its cause).
Subsequent to the appellate argument in the case sub judice, this Court decided Benjamin v. Union Carbide, supra, a product liability asbestos case. We pause to review it.
In Benjamin, the decedent was diagnosed with mesothelioma in early 1997, from which he died on May 25, 1997. Although the disease was indisputably caused by exposure to asbestos, the decedent's wife and children waited until March of 2003 to bring survival and wrongful death actions, claiming, inter alia, that they did not know until late 2001 that "the disease was caused by exposure to asbestos...." Id., slip op. at 2.
The defendants moved for summary judgment based on limitations, arguing, among other things, that the "actual express knowledge possessed by the decedent and [the widow], i.e., the diagnosis of mesothelioma, was sufficient to put them on inquiry notice, no later than the spring of 1997, that the decedent's exposure to asbestos was the cause of his mesothelioma." Id. In response, the widow claimed that neither she nor her husband was informed of the causal connection between asbestos exposure and the disease, nor did they inquire at the time of the diagnosis. Id., slip op. at 5. The wife's "sole argument that neither she, the other beneficiaries, nor the decedent had sufficient actual knowledge to place them on inquiry notice so as to charge them with the knowledge that a reasonable investigation would have revealed." Id., slip op. at 12. Had they merely inquired, however, they would have learned of the causal connection between the decedent's illness and his exposure to asbestos.
With respect to the survival claim, this Court upheld the award of summary judgment to the defendants, based on limitations. We observed that " he discovery rule, including the inquiry notice prong, has to be considered and applied in the context of the facts of a particular case." Id., slip op. at 37. The Court concluded that the decedent's "express knowledge of mesothelioma and asbestos exposure was sufficient to put the decedent on inquiry notice in his lifetime." Id. at 3; see also slip op. at 37. We explained: "We reach this decision because, based on the state of general knowledge of occupational diseases and asbestos exposure in 1997, a reasonable person with the decedent's actual knowledge would have conducted an inquiry." Id., slip op. at 37-38. In our view, " ll of the facts necessary to make a claim were in existence at the time of the diagnosis of mesothelioma, and a reasonable inquiry would have disclosed a cause of action." Id. at 38.
Never
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