Youmans v. Douron, Inc.

211 Md.App. 274

65 A.3d 185

Alicia YOUMANS

v.DOURON, INC.

No. 1981, Sept. Term, 2010.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

May 1, 2013.

Bruce M. Bender (Axelson, Williamowsky, Bender & Fishman, PC, on the brief), Rockville, MD, for Appellant.

Kristine R. Zenkewicz (Franklin & Prokopik, PC, on the brief), Baltimore, MD, for Appellee.

Panel: KRAUSER, C.J., KEHOE and CHARLES E. MOYLAN, JR. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.

KRAUSER, C.J.

While working at the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (“MC–DEP”), Alicia Youmans, appellant, was injured, when a desk upon which she was leaning, collapsed. After filing a workers' compensation claim, Ms. Youmans brought an action, in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, against Douron, Inc., the supplier of that piece of furniture, for breach of contract, claiming that she was an intended third-party beneficiary of the furniture procurementcontract under which the desk had been provided by that company to the MC–DEP.

Two amended complaints—whose timeliness are the subject of this appeal—followed: The first amended complaint abandoned the breach of contract claim, in favor of a claim for the breach of implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose,¹ while the second added a claim for negligence, rendering it, in final form, a two-count complaint, that is, a suit for breach of warranty and negligence. Ultimately, both of these counts were dismissed by the Montgomery County circuit court as time-barred, terminating her lawsuit.

On appeal, Ms. Youmans contends that the circuit court erred, in both holding that her warranty claim is barred by limitations and that her negligence claim does not relate back to the filing of her initial complaint and, thus, is also time-barred. We agree but only in part. We hold that, as the circuit court found, Youmans's warranty claim is time-barred but, contrary to what that court ruled, her negligence claim does relate back to her initial complaint and, thus, remains viable. Consequently, we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for further proceedings.

Background

On December 28, 2005, Douron, Inc., a supplier of office furniture, delivered the desk in question and other office furniture, pursuant to a furniture supply contract it had with the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection (“MC–DEP”), to an MC–DEP office in Rockville, Maryland. Upon delivery, employees of Douron, Inc., assembled the desk. Nearly fourteen months later, on February 15, 2007, the desk collapsed when Youmans, an MC–DEP employee at the Rockville office, in her words, “slightly leaned” against it. The collapse caused her to fall and suffer what she described as “severe personal injuries.”

Later that year, Ms. Youmans filed a workers' compensation claim. Then, precisely three years and one day after the date of her injury, on February 16, 2010, Youmans filed an action against Douron, Inc., in the circuit court, alleging that she was an “intended” third-party beneficiary of the furniture procurement contract between Douron, Inc., and MC–DEP and that, as a result of Douron's breach of that agreement, she sustained personal injuries. When Douron, Inc., moved to dismiss her complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, Youmans, more than four years after the delivery and installation of the desk, filed her first amended complaint, which abandoned the breach of contract claim, alleging instead that Douron, Inc., had impliedly warranted that the desk it provided was merchantable and fit for a particular purpose, that she was a third-party beneficiary of those implied warranties, and that, as consequence of Douron's breach of warranties, she sustained personal injuries. Then, in response to yet another of Douron's motions to dismiss, on May 28, 2010, more than three years and three months after the accident, Youmans filed a second amended complaint, adding a count for negligence to her suit.

After a hearing, the circuit court granted Douron's motion to dismiss, holding that the breach of warranty count is barred by the four-year statute of limitations in § 2–725 of the Maryland Uniform Commercial Code (“Maryland UCC”) ² and that, as the negligence count, in the court's view, does not relate back to her initial complaint, it too is time-barred. Since those rulings disposed of all of her claims, the grounds for this appeal were laid.

Discussion

Because the circuit court, in ruling on Douron's motion to dismiss, considered matters outside Youmans's final complaint—specifically, the exhibits attached to the motion requesting dismissal—we construe the ruling below as a grant of summary judgment. Md. Rule 2–322(c) (stating that if, “on a motion to dismiss for failure of the pleading to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, matters outside the pleading are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion shall be treated as one for summary judgment”).

We therefore turn to the rule governing summary judgment, Maryland Rule 2–501. Subsection (f) of that rule provides that, upon a party's motion for summary judgment, a court “shall enter judgment in favor of or against the moving party if the motion and response show that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the party in whose favor judgment is entered is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” As there was no dispute below as to any material fact,³ we proceed to the question of whether Douron, Inc., was “entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” To answer that question, we conduct a review de novo of the legal determinations by the circuit court, which are the subject of this appeal. Frazier v. Castle Ford, Ltd., 200 Md.App. 285, 294, 27 A.3d 583 (2011).

I.Breach of Warranty

Section 2–725 of the Maryland UCC imposes a four-year statute of limitations upon an action for breach of any contract for the sale of goods. Although Ms. Youmans's amended complaints allege a breach of implied warranty and thus are subject, under that section of the Maryland UCC, to its four-year statute of limitations, Ms. Youmans claims that, because she filed a workers' compensation claim for work-related injuries, she had an additional two months in which to file her breach of warranty claim under § 9–902 of the Labor & Employment Article (“LE”),⁴ a provision of the Maryland Workers' Compensation Act.⁵

When two months are added to the time in which she had to file her breach of warranty claim, she had until February 28, 2010, Youmans points out, to file her breach of warranty action, as the desk was delivered and installed on December 28, 2005. Although she did not meet that deadline, Youmans maintains that, because she did file her initial complaint twelve days before that date and because her final complaint purportedly relates back to her initial complaint, her breach of warranty claim was timely filed.

Douron, Inc., responds that, because LE § 9–902 of the Maryland Workers' Compensation Act applies to tort and not contract claims, it does not and cannot extend, by two months, the period for filing a breach of warranty claim. Youmans counters, however, that, even if Douron, Inc., is correct in its claim that LE § 9–902 extends to only tort claims, the “line between contract and tort” is so “blurred in ... Maryland” that an action alleging a breach of an implied warranty, in effect, so “closely resembles an action in strict liability, a tort,” that no rational distinction can be drawn between implied warranty and strict tort liability for purposes of LE § 9–902 and its two-month tolling period. Then, citing cases from other jurisdictions, she suggests that there is no essential distinction between an action for breach of an implied warranty and a tort action based on strict liability. In fact, she goes so far as to maintain that the damages she sought for her personal injuries were actually “tort based,” though couched in terms of a breach of warranty in her pleadings. But her argument does not end here.

Ms. Youmans further contends that the abolition of the privity requirement by the Court of Appeals in breach of warranty actions, when personal injury is alleged, see Frericks v. General Motors Corp., 278 Md. 304, 363 A.2d 460 (1976), confirms their tort-like nature. And thus, her warranty action, she reasons, was not a contract claim but, a tort claim or, “at an absolute minimum,” a “hybrid tort-contract action.” That being so, the applicable statute of limitations for her warranty claim, she claims, is set forth in § 5–101 of the Courts & Judicial Proceedings Article (“CJ”),⁶ the general three-year statute of limitations for civil actions. That statute, although shorter by a year than the four-year statute of limitations of § 2–725 of the Maryland UCC, would, if applicable, have given her an additional fourteen months in which to file her suit, because the three-year limitations period for her “tort” claim would have begun to run from the date of injury, February 15, 2007, and not from the date of delivery of the office furniture, December 28, 2005, as Maryland UCC § 2–725 provides.

Finally, she maintains, because her self-described “tort” claim was subject to the tolling provision in LE § 9–902, she had three years and two months from the date of injury, February 15, 2007, to file her claim or, to be more specific, she had until April 15, 2010, to do so. Since her initial complaint was filed two months earlier, on February 16, 2010, and her amended complaints, purportedly, relate back to the initial complaint, Youmans claims that her breach of warranty claim was timely.

We begin our review of Youmans's claims by first considering the extent to which LE § 9–902, which extends the limitations period for an additional two months, is applicable to her claims. For reasons we shall explain, that section applies only to tort, not to contract claims. Consequently, we find no merit to Ms. Youmans's first...