Here's what got this post started: I'm a big fan of Beck and Hermann's Drug & Device Law Blog, and have had it on CBL's list of approved blogs for years. Although they both practice in the world of big law, they write like -- dare I say it? -- real people. I even enjoy it when they post about how wacky California is, although that's supposed to be my department.
However. In a post late last week, they were puzzled over an unpublished decision in a district court case in Los Angeles called Dorsett v. Sandoz, Inc. Their puzzlement seemed to stem from confusion between principles of deferred accrual of the statute of limitations law and relation back of so-called "Doe allegations." Anybody left awake now?
So let's see if we can either put the rest of you to sleep, or else straighten this out. And CBL will use the opportunity to show how the statutes of limitations and California's fictitiously named defendant statute interact with each other.
To non-lawyers, the concept of statute of limitations probably seems straightforward: you have so many years to file a lawsuit, if you're on one side of the line you're in, on the other you're out. Simple? Ha! First of all, we have tons of different statutes of limitations, ranging from ninety days for conversion of property left at a hotel to ten years for an action against a real estate developer for latent property defects. The statute for personal injuries and wrongful death is most often two years, although there are some exceptions (the most commonly applied one being the one year statute for asbestos-related disease or death). But that's the simple part. More after the jump.
Continue reading "Suing The Unknown Defendant: How The Doe Device Works" »