Belatedly recognizing a 137-year-old opinion was vacated, Supreme Court holds statute of limitations was tolled just long enough

It’s about time.  “It” being today’s Supreme Court’s opinion in Shalabi v. City of Fontana, that is.  First, the court resolves a statute of limitations issue.  Then it explains why it took so long to realize that a 137-year-old opinion on the topic had been vacated.

Interpreting one statute that tolls statutes of limitations for minors, one statute that governs calculating when a person is a minor, and another statute concerning the calculation of time in general, the Supreme Court holds that a plaintiff’s action for the fatal police shooting of his father was filed on the last possible day instead being a day late.  The unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye concludes that “an individual’s 18th birthday is excluded when calculating the applicable limitations period.”  Thus, the plaintiff’s lawsuit was brought within the applicable two-year statute of limitations when he filed suit on his 20th birthday.

Ironically, in an opinion about timeliness, the court says it’s recognizing “better late than never” that one of its 1884 decisions never had any precedential effect.  The lack of precedent is because the court vacated the decision — a decision that had been made by only three justices sitting in one of two departments (that’s the way the court was set up at the time) — when the full court opted to hear the appeal in bank.

The court affirms the Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal, which had found unconvincing the 1884 decision.  It also disagrees with the reasoning of 19th century New York and Texas decisions, finding 20th century cases from Alaska and Minnesota more persuasive.

The Supreme Court also disapproves of various opinions — including two of its own opinions and one opinion each from the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — that had afforded precedential value to the vacated 1884 decision.  (Can the California Supreme Court disapprove of, as opposed to disagreeing with, the court of another jurisdiction?)  Those other opinions were led astray in part, the court says, because “services such as Westlaw and LexisNexis’s Shepard’s
Citations Service do not show the relevant subsequent or prior history” of the 1884 decision or the superseding in bank decision.

[Disclosure:  Horvitz & Levy filed an amicus brief and a supplemental amicus brief in the case.  Also, Horvitz & Levy partner Steven Fleischman participated in the oral argument.]