Gregory Burdess v. Cottrell, Inc., No. 21-2028 (8th Cir. 2022)
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Plaintiff woke up in an Illinois motel room without any feeling in his arms; he was later diagnosed in Missouri with bilateral shoulder impingement syndrome. Four years later, Plaintiff and his wife filed an action against Cottrell, Inc., the manufacturer of the ratchet system that allegedly caused Plaintiff’s injury. In granting Cottrell’s motion for summary judgment, the district court found that Illinois’s two-year statute of limitations applied to Plaintiff’s cause of action instead of Missouri’s five-year statute of limitations, thus barring Plaintiff’s and his wife’s claims. Plaintiff and his wife appealed, arguing that the district court erred in not applying Missouri’s statute of limitations. At issue is when—or where in this context—the statute of limitations began to run on Plaintiff’s cause of action, which depends upon the proper interpretation and application of Missouri’s borrowing statute.
The Eighth Circuit reversed, concluding that the matter is a fact question for the jury to decide. The court explained that it must determine whether the “evidence was such to place a reasonably prudent person on notice of a potentially actionable injury” in Illinois, where Plaintiff woke up to complete numbness in his arms. The court reasoned that on the three facts the district court contemplated the court cannot say as a matter of law that a reasonable person in Plaintiff’s position would have been on notice of a potentially actionable injury in Illinois.
Court Description: [Shepherd, Author, with Kelly and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Torts. In action alleging plaintiff had suffered bilateral impingement syndrome as a result of the defective design of the tie-down ratcheting system used on defendant's car-hauler trailers, the district court erred in determining that plaintiff's claim originated in Illinois in April 2013, when he awoke in a motel room with numbness in his arms; while the Illinois motel experience was evidence of substantial damage, it was insufficient alone to put a reasonable person on notice of a potentially actionable injury as a matter of law, and the district court erred in granting defendant's motion for summary judgment based on defendant's claim the suit was barred by Illinois's two-year statute of limitations as calculated from the Illinois motel incident.
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