Reynoldsville Casket Co., et al. v. Carol L. Hyde (514 U.S. 749)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 15, 1995 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 514 U.S. 749 · 115 S. Ct. 1745
- Decided
- May 15, 1995
- Term
- October Term 1994
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. In Bendix Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U. S. 888 (1988), this Court held unconstitutional (as impermissibly burdening interstate commerce) an Ohio “tolling” provision that, in effect, gave Ohio tort plaintiffs unlimited time to sue out-of-state (but not in-state) defendants. Subsequently, in the case before us, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that, despite Bendix, Ohio’s tolling law continues to apply to tort claims that accrued before that decision. This holding, in our view, violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. We therefore reverse the Ohio Supreme Court’s judgment. The accident that led to this case, a collision between a car and a truck, occurred in Ashtabula County, Ohio, on March 5, 1984. More than three years later, on August 11, 1987, Carol Hyde (respondent here) sued the truck’s driver, John Blosh, and its owner, Reynoldsville Casket Company (petitioners). All parties concede that, had Blosh and Reynolds-ville made their home in Ohio, Ohio law would have given Hyde only two years to bring her lawsuit. See Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2305.10 (1991). But, because petitioners were from Pennsylvania, a special provision of Ohio law tolled the running of the statute of limitations, making the lawsuit timely. See §2305.15(A) (tolling the statute of limitations while a person against whom “a cause of…
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