In August 2002, Dayle Trentadue, as the daughter and representative of the estate of Margarette Eby, sued various parties for their part in Eby’s 1986 murder at the home she rented in Flint, Michigan. The murder had been unsolved from 1986 until 2002, when DNA evidence established that Jeffrey Gorton had committed the crime. Gorton worked for his parents’ corporation, which serviced the sprinkler system on the grounds surrounding the rental home where Eby lived.

In addition to Gorton, Trentadue sued Gorton’s parents, their corporation, the estate of the rentalhome owner, the property management company that managed the rental home, and two employees of the rental-home owner. The claims against the parties other than Gorton were negligence-based wrongful death theories. Those parties asked the court to dismiss Trentadue’s lawsuit against them, claiming the action was barred by Michigan’s three-year statute of limitations for wrongful death actions. 

Statutes of limitations require that a plaintiff who wishes to make a legal claim must file her lawsuit within a designated length of time after her claim accrues. Normally a claim accrues at the time the legal wrong was committed. If the plaintiff does not file her lawsuit within the time specified by the applicable statute of limitations, her claim cannot lawfully be pursued. 

The defendants other than Gorton argued that Trentadue’s case should be dismissed because her claim accrued when Eby was killed in 1986—meaning that the 2002 filing of the lawsuit occurred long after the three-year period had expired. Trentadue responded that a common law rule known as the “discovery rule” should be applied so as to suspend the running of the limitations period until 2002, when she learned the identity of Eby’s killer. Under the discovery rule, the 2002 filing of the lawsuit would have been timely because the limitations period would have been tolled, or suspended, until the 2002 discovery that Gorton was the murderer. The Michigan Compiled Laws (MCL)—the statute that includes the relevant three-year statute of limitations for wrongful death claims does not include a tolling provision similar to the common law discovery rule for wrongful death claims, even though it does in other areas. Nonetheless, the statute likewise does not explicitly reject the discovery rule. How should the court determine whether the common law discovery rule applies to Trentadue’s claims or whether it has been displaced by the MCL’s statute of limitations?