Long

Plaintiffs sued over the use of their computer-altered childhood likenesses in nationally broadcast children’s television programming more than two years after all broadcasts had ceased. On appeal, they contend that the trial court erred in ruling that their claims were subject to the Uniform Single Publication Act (USPA) (Civ. Code, § 3425.1 et seq.) and were therefore barred by the statutes of limitations (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 339, 340). We hold that the USPA governs plaintiffs’ claims and that plaintiffs may not avoid the statutes of limitations through the discovery rule or theories of fraudulent concealment and accrual.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

On January 18, 2002, plaintiffs filed a tort action seeking damages arising from network broadcasts and internet use of their likenesses between September 1997 and May 1999. Plaintiffs’ sixth-grade yearbook photographs had been “morphed”—altered by computer—into characters that were incorporated as fictional, cartoon-like characters in a series of vignettes broadcast in Saturday morning children’s programming on ABC television. In addition to the broadcasts, retail products and other internet tie-ins were created,…