Alabama Supreme Court Clarifies Statute of Limitations for Wantonness
| Jurisdiction | Alabama,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 72 No. 6 Pg. 0481 |
| Pages | 0481 |
| Publication year | 2011 |
The Supreme Court of Alabama's recent decision in Ex parte Capstone Building Corp.1 marks the latest development in what has arguably been a 150-year long evolution of the distinction between "trespass" and "action [or trespass] on the case," with a related consequence being the clarification of what actions are governed by the six-year statute of limitations found in Ala. Code § 6-2-34(1) and those that are governed by the two-year catch-all statute in Ala Code § 6-2-38(l). While some commentators have suggested that the court's decision in Capstone represents a fundamental change in the law, others are less surprised, and are of the opinion that the decision is only a clarification of what the law has always been. Regardless of whether the decision is novel or nothing new, it is now clear: wantonness is not an action for "trespass to person or liberty, such as false imprisonment or assault and battery" and, therefore, does not fall within the six-year statute. Accordingly, the statute of limitations for claims of wantonness is two years.
Trespass vs. Trespass on Case
Under the ancient formulation, "whenever the injury [was] direct and immediate, whether it proceed[ed] from design or negligence, trespass [would] lie. But where the injury [was] merely consequential, the remedy must be an action on the case."2 Thus, the real difference between trespass and action on the case was the "directness" of causation, rather than the intent of causation. This rule was the applied distinction in one form or another for well over a century, though there were some attempts to subtly redefine its application.3
Beginning in 1980 with the dissenting opinion of Justice Richard L. Jones in Strozier v. Marchich, there has been a steady move away from the ancient distinction and the language (direct/indirect causation) that governed it. In that opinion, Justice Jones wrote:
Whatever vestige of the outmoded direct/indirect distinction between trespass and trespass on the case still exists in Alabama, I would now abandon and adopt instead the more modern tort concept of measuring the cause of action in terms of the degree of culpability of the alleged wrongful conduct.4
This was, Jones argued, the way that Alabama courts had applied the rule for quite some time in the past, but the language of the rule had never clearly changed to reflect the rule's application in practice.
After Strozier, the Alabama Supreme Court did not revisit this issue until 2004 in McKenzie v. Killian.5 At that time, the court determined to heed the call issued first by Justice Jones in 1980 and then by Linda Webb's 1998 law review article,6 definitively redefining the distinction between trespass and action on the case as one of culpability, not one of causality. After positively quoting the above-mentioned excerpt from Justice Jones's 1980 dissent, the McKenzie court noted:
We embrace this reasoning today. We overrule Sasser and its progeny to the extent that those cases prefer the theory of causality over intent as the mechanism for distinguishing between actions for trespass and for trespass on the case.7
For this reason alone, McKenzie represented a significant decision-it...
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