Fowler v. Valencourt , 334 N.C. 345 ( 1993 )

Justice MEYER

dissenting.

Contrary to the majority, I conclude that N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3) (the one-year statute of limitations) and not N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13) (the three-year statute of limitations) is the more specific statute and should govern the outcome of this case. I therefore dissent.

The appellate courts of this state have clearly and unequivocally stated on several occasions that the one-year statute of limitations applies to false arrest and assault actions brought against police officers. In Mobley v. Broome, 248 N.C. 54, 102 S.E.2d 407 (1958), this Court held that the one-year statute of limitations is applicable to actions for assault and false imprisonment applied to actions against police officers as well as others. This principle has been reaffirmed by the Court-of Appeals on several occasions. See, e.g., Evans v. Chipps, 56 N.C. App. 232, 287 S.E.2d 426 (1982); Jones v. City of Greensboro, 51 N.C. App. 571, 277 S.E.2d 562 (1981).

This Court should follow its own past decisions and those of the Court of Appeals in accord with ours that have held, without exception, that the one-year statute of limitations applies.

The interpretative problems that N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13) creates stem from the ambiguity inherent in the use of the term “trespass.” This statute is well over one hundred years old, and the term “trespass” historically has embraced a wide variety of actions. In Brown v. Walker, 188 N.C. 52, 58, 123 S.E. 633, 636 (1924), this Court concluded that the term, as used in this statute, was restricted to “unlawful acts done to the person or property of another by violence or force, direct ■ or imputed,” rather than any wrongful invasion of the rights of another.

When Brown was decided, the section of the statute relating to trespass by a public officer under color of his office was in N.C.G.S. § 1-54, and the Court, in commenting on the applicability of the statute to acts not involving acts done to another by violence or force (such as in the present case, a false imprisonment), said this:

True, in its more general sense, a trespass is sometimes said to include any wrongful invasion of the rights of another, but in its more natural and usual meaning it is properly restricted to unlawful acts done to the person or property of another by violence or force, direct or imputed. It is to acts of trespass in this sense that the one-year statute of limitations applies — that is, a trespass committed by a public officer under color of his office and constituting a wrongful invasion of the rights of third persons by force shown or imputed, and the statute does not and was never intended to apply to a breach of official duty in reference to the principal and employer — in this case the municipality.

Id. (citation omitted). It is as clear as can be that the sort of trespass contemplated by the use of the term “trespass” in the present N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13) is a violent physical assault and that false arrest or imprisonment continues to be covered by the one-year statute, N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3).

To the extent the term “trespass” is used in N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13) in an aggregate sense to refer to a range of actions based upon injury to persons or property, the majority’s holding that the three-year statute applies in this case runs afoul of the principle that where a statute of general application conflicts with a statute applicable only to a restricted class of cases, the latter controls. The majority relies on this very rule but draws the wrong conclusion in seeking to apply the principle to the instant case. The reason the majority draws the wrong conclusion is that it focuses on who the alleged tort-feasor is rather than the nature of the action. As a result, the majority mistakenly concludes that, because the class “public officers” is more narrow than the class of all persons who could be tort-feasors in actions based on assault or false imprisonment, the three-year statute, N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13), is the more narrow statute and is therefore controlling. The majority’s reasoning ignores the principle that “in determining the applicable statute of limitations, the focus should be upon the nature of the right which has been injured.” Holly v. Coggin Pontiac, Inc., 43 N.C. App. 229, 241, 259 S.E.2d 1, 9, disc. rev. denied, 298 N.C. 806, 261 S.E.2d 919 (1979). Plaintiff’s reasoning converts N.C.G.S. § l-54(3)’s one-year statute of limitation for assault and false imprisonment into a three-year period in any case where the defendant is a “police officer,” thus ignoring the nature of the right allegedly injured, that is, to be free of assault and false arrest. N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3) is not a statute of general application applicable to an entire range of trespass actions. It is specifically directed to claims “for libel, slander, assault, battery, or false imprisonment,” N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3) (Supp. 1992), rather than the entire range of “trespass” actions committed by public officers covered under N.C.G.S. § 1-52(13). Properly understood, then, it is N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3) that is the more restricted and the more specific statute.

Our North Carolina cases have repeatedly and consistently recognized that the one-year statute of limitation for actions based on assault and false imprisonment applies to police officers. Mobley v. Broome, 248 N.C. 54, 102 S.E.2d 407; Fowler v. Valencourt, 108 N.C. App. 106, 423 S.E.2d 785 (1992); Evans v. Chipps, 56 N.C. App. 232, 287 S.E.2d 426; Jones v. City of Greensboro, 51 N.C. App. 571, 277 S.E.2d 562. The majority’s decision runs afoul of years of faithful adherence by our courts to this well-settled rule.

The decision in Jones v. City of Greensboro was handed down in 1981, some six years after the enactment of the 1975 amendment. Again in 1982, the Court of Appeals once more recognized N.C.G.S. § 1-54(3) as the applicable statute of limitations for false imprisonment by a police officer. Evans v. Chipps, 56 N.C. App. 232, 287 S.E.2d 426. The General Assembly has obviously had numerous opportunities to clarify the law had these decisions been inconsistent with its intent. The legislature’s failure to do so suggests that the Court of Appeals’ 1981 and 1982 decisions that followed our 1958 decision in Mobley v. Broome were correct.

Had the legislature intended to extend the statute of limitations for false imprisonment by police officers, as the majority says it intended, surely it would have done so explicitly rather than by means of the obscure, outdated reference to “trespass” actions. If that was the legislature’s intention, it has been ignored by the courts of this state for several decades, and the legislature would have certainly clarified the statute by this late date.