In Turner v. Sanoski, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals addressed the statute of limitations for a malicious prosecution claim arising in Douglas County. For those of you who hate to wade through text to get to the answer, I’ll cut to the chase:
because malicious prosecution is an intentional tort to the person, the WIS. STAT. § 893.57 two-year statute of limitations applies
Seems to make sense, given the statute’’s language that says it applies to “other intentional tort to the person.” What’s surprising is that this is the first published decision on this topic in almost 30 years.
In the Wisconsin Law Journal, Jack Zemlicka writes about a potential statutory change that would increase the statute of limitations on an intentional cause of action from two years to three years. The additional time would bring the statute on intentional claims into line with the statue for negligent claims, which is already three years.
From a practical perspective, it may not make much of a difference, except in cases where there are likely to be claims of both negligent and intentional action. For instance, negligent hiring and supervision claims often include claims of intentional action by the employee, or claims of inadequate security which often include claims of an underlying attack by a patron or invitee.
This change might also curb attempts by plaintiffs’ counsel to characterize intentional behavior as negligent in order to obtain the benefit of a longer statute of limitation. While not often successful, this strategy can cause expensive motion practice which increase settlement leverage.
