 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Greczyn v. Colgate-Palmolive3/21/2005
assistance. Kling Lindquist suggests that our prior jurisprudence is dispositive of the correctness of the Appellate Division's holding that Greczyn's suit is barred. We disagree.
A.
In Rosenberg, supra, plaintiff sued for injuries she sustained in 1968 when she caught her heel in a fissure in the roadbed of Bergenline Avenue in North Bergen. The road had been repaved in 1935. The contractors were granted summary judgment under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1.1. The Appellate Division reversed on the ground that a road is not "an improvement to real property" within the meaning of the act. We granted certification and reversed the narrow holding of the Appellate Division regarding the sweep of the statute. In so doing, we had occasion to comment on the character of N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1.1:
It seems important, first, to examine the nature of this law. In an important respect it is unlike the typical statute of limitations. Commonly such a statute fixes a time within which an injured person must institute an action seeking redress, and generally this time span is measured from the moment the cause of action accrues. Here such is not the case. The time within which suit may be brought under this statute is entirely unrelated to the accrual of any cause of action.
Where a claim for redress is based upon negligent injury to person or property, the cause of action accrues when there has been a negligent act with proximately resulting injury or damage. The careless act itself is not enough to give rise to a cause of action; there must also be consequential injury or damage. Rosenau v. City of New Brunswick, supra, 51 N.J. at 137-139. Thus plaintiff's alleged cause of action did not arise until she fell and sustained injury. Of course this was many years after the ten year period fixed by the statute had expired. She claims that the statute, in its application to her, amounts to a deprivation of due process, since, as she expresses it, the statute bars her cause of action before it has arisen.
This formulation suggests a misconception of the effect of the statute. It does not bar a cause of action; its effect, rather, is to prevent what might otherwise be a cause of action, from ever arising. Thus injury occurring more than ten years after the negligent act allegedly responsible for the harm, forms no basis for recovery. The injured party literally has no cause of action. The harm that has been done is damnum absque injuria -- a wrong for which the law affords no redress. The function of the statute is thus rather to define substantive rights than to alter or modify a remedy. The Legislature is entirely at liberty to create new rights or abolish old ones as long as no vested right is disturbed.
[Rosenberg, supra, 61 N.J. at 199-200.]
We went on to hold that plaintiff's action, brought thirty years after the repaving of the roadway, was barred.
In O'Connor v. Altus, supra, an infant plaintiff asserted claims against a builder for injuries that occurred nine years after completion of the structure that she alleged was negligently built. The action was filed sixteen months after the injury, and thus outside the ten-year statute of repose. 67 N.J. at 120. The state of the law at the time allowed a personal injury plaintiff to pursue a claim if she asserted it within two years of becoming twenty-one. Ibid. Applying N.J.S.A. 2A:14-1.1's prohibition, and citing Rosenberg extensively, however, we concluded that "the legislature did not intend the ten-year period after construction to be 'expanded' by reason of one's infancy." Id. at 123. Put another way, the infant could not file suit after ten years.
In Hudson County v. Terminal Con
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 New Jersey Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|