statute of limitations ensures claim is presented before facts are obscured by passage of time
How later courts described this case
- statute of limitations ensures claim is presented before facts are obscured by passage of time
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MADDEN, Judge
(concurring in the result).
I agree with the court’s conclusion, but I do not agree with the doctrine expounded in the opinion concerning the statute of limitations. As I understand that doctrine, it treats the statute of limitations as a philosophical rather than a legal principle. It is to be applied if the situation is such that one of the reasons for the enactment of statutes of limitations, viz., the uncertainty of the evidence in cases involving stale claims, is present. If the claim is old, but the evidence is still clear, or is of a particular kind, then the statute is not to be applied.
This is a completely original idea. That fact, in itself, ought perhaps not to condemn it. When a court undertakes to reshape a statute, it takes courage to pick out the statute of limitations as the object of reshaping. Such statutes have been regarded as arbitrary in their nature. It has been thought that if one filed his suit a day late, he was out, though of course there was no moral difference between the day of filing, and the day before. So perhaps it would have been more prudent to pick out some other statute to remodel.
When a court originates a new doctrine, it does so because there is an evil to be cured. The evil which has given rise to this doctrine is not difficult to identify. The court has adopted another novel doctrine, viz., that an officer entitled to retirement with an annuity for life is deprived of that annuity for all the rest of his life if he neglects to file his suit for it within six years of the time of his release from active duty. Having applied this doctrine in a number of cases, we, quite naturally, have not been pleased with the results. See, e. g., Girault v. United States, D.C., 135 F.Supp. 521 ; Odell v. United States, Ct.Cl., 139 F.Supp. 747 .
The treatment of the statute of limitations in the instant case is an effort to undo a part of the harm done by our recent decisions. I would undo all of that harm by overruling those decisions. Instead of inventing a new doctrine to partly neutralize the harmful effects of another newly invented doctrine, I would discard both and again acquire the freedom to decide all the cases of this type as they could and should have been decided according to the law as it has been for decades.
Not the least remarkable feature of the instant decision is that, after going to some lengths to get the statute of limitations out of the case, it is allowed to slip in again, at the end, almost unobserved. The same record evidence which was the justification for entertaining the suit, because, though old, it was not stale, is not regarded as a justification for allowing recovery for the very years during which it toiled the statute.