Plaintiff Disputes T-Mobile’s Contention That Her Claims vs. T-Mobile Are Time-Barred

Counsel for Shalace Williams disputes T-Mobile’s contention that her claims against T-Mobile for Sprint’s negligence while it was still an independent company are time-barred (see 2406250027), the attorney wrote U.S. District Judge Rachel Kovner for Eastern New York in Brooklyn in a letter response Wednesday (docket 1:24-cv-02732). Williams, administratrix of Darryl Williams' estate, seeks compensatory and punitive damages against T-Mobile for Sprint’s negligent failure to comply with a criminal investigation that led to Daryl Williams spending seven years in prison for a February 2013 robbery he didn’t commit (see 2404120049). The statute of limitations for negligence and negligent misrepresentation is three years, and T-Mobile contends that the plaintiff’s causes of action “accrued when the alleged negligent act resulted in injury,” which was June 12, 2014, "at the latest," the date when Daryl Williams was sentenced. As such, contends T-Mobile, the plaintiff’s claims were time-barred on June 12, 2017 -- nearly seven years before she filed her complaint against T-Mobile. But the defendant's setting of the June 2014 accrual date is “incorrect,” Williams’ attorney, Joshua Fitch of Cohen & Fitch, told the judge. The New York Court of Appeals “has made it clear” that a tort claim can’t accrue until the claim becomes enforceable, such as when all elements of the tort can be truthfully alleged in a complaint, said Fitch. Accordingly, the plaintiff’s negligence claim wasn’t enforceable, and thus couldn’t have accrued, until Nov. 17, 2022, when Daryl Williams' conviction was vacated, and he was released from prison, based on the production of the very same records that Sprint had misrepresented 10 years earlier, he said. As such, Williams’ filing less than two years later is timely, he said.