Summary Analysis
R-58
DATE: 2019-06-20
DOCKET: 18-485
NAME: Edward G. McDonough, Petitioner v. Youel Smith, Individually and as Special District Attorney for the County of Rensselaer, New York, aka Trey Smith
WORTHY: False
OPINION: Court
AUTHOR: Sotomayor
JOINING: Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Kavanaugh
GOOD: Yes
PAGES: 16
OPINION: Dissenting
AUTHOR: Thomas
JOINING: Kagan, Gorsuch
GOOD: No
PAGES: 3
Case Commentary
I'm such a Non Lawyer that it is news to me that the point at which a Statute of Limitations (for The Case at hand, at least) begins to run is "when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action."The exact moment in time to which this refers is, of course, highly subjective and why This Case went to the Supreme Court in the first place.
Personally, I question the need for a Statute of Limitations for anything, at all. What I might replace it with would be a Presumption of the Erosion of Evidence... that as time goes by less and less weight is given to any Evidence... and the Bar of Proof goes up.
But we are stuck with Statutes of Limitations... and that would be plural. So, I (once again, a Non Lawyer, Non Legal Professional, who doesn't actually care much about The Rule of Law) would condense all Statutes of Limitations into a single one.
- Three Years
- Because that's the time for The Case at hand.
- From the Incident
- The Clock Starts at the Time of Injury
- But one doesn't always know they are injured:
- So, alternately, the clock starts when a person understands (i.e. knows) they have been injured...
- Which means the Clock Resets whenever the injured learns of a new or greater injury.
I have no reason to believe the above reflects the system we have.
For one, I stated my case in well under 500 Alphanumeric Characters. And if this were some formal Legal Code, it would have taken exponential multiples of that.
And for two, there aren't a lot of exceptions in the above, while the case at hand (if not about an exception) is about a very (microscopically) specific situation. And there are other laws (with other Statutes of Limitations) for other (microscopically) specific situations.
Thomas and Friends (including Gorsuch) Dissent. And I believe this has more to do with not caring about The Case at hand than disagreeing with the result.
And I cannot fault them for that... you know, if that is indeed how they feel. But then, maybe, I am just projecting my own feelings onto the matter.