William Neil Turnbull v. Josephine Bonkowski and Leonard King

This appeal is from a summary judgment granted by the District Court upon its conclusion that the action of the appellant, plaintiff below, was barred by the statute of limitations. The jurisdiction of the District Court rested upon diversity of citizenship and the requisite amount in controversy, 28 U.S.C. § 1332 , and the correctness of the challenged judgment depends upon the application of Alaska’s law.

The complaint was filed in Illinois, where the plaintiff is a resident, and thereafter transferred to the District of Alaska. The date of the filing was January 25, 1966, the twenty-first anniversary of the plaintiff’s birth. The complaint set forth a tort claim, alleging that on June 15, 1956, when the plaintiff was eleven years of age, the defendant-appellees tortiously conducted themselves in a manner which proximately caused personal injury to the plaintiff. Under Alaska’s law, the claimant attained his majority at the age of nineteen years, and until that time, of course, the running of the controlling statute of limitations was tolled. This is specifically provided by the Alaskan Code of Civil Procedure, Alaska Stat.Ann., tit. 9, ch. 10, § 140 (Michie 1962), and the same…