So held the Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday in Jones v. Fluor Daniels Services Corp., when a five-justice majority concluded that, despite a wealth of authority that a three-year statute of limitations applied, the relevant period actually was one year. The ruling also suggested, but did not explicitly hold, that all intentional torts now rest on a one-year statute of limitations. Four justices dissented, led by Justice Dickinson, whose opinion to the contrary garnered the votes of Justices Lamar and Kitchens.

Everyone at the Court seemed to agree that, figuratively speaking, the water had been murked up on this question for some time. Justice Pierce's majority opinion expressly acknowledged that the Court had been "inconsistent in its rulings" on the issue -- a candid admission, by any measure. And any time the Court takes on the task of providing clear guidance on a given matter, I'm all for it. But the question is how best to do that without disturbing any more precedent than is absolutely necessary.

As Justice Dickinson pointed out, the less messy route clearly lay with a three-year limitations period, which he wrote "enjoys far more support" in the Court's jurisprudence than did the argument for a one-year statute of limitations. Justice Dickinson went as far as to describe the majority's position as one relying on "meager authority." 

But aside from concerns regarding the disturbance of precedent, Justice Dickinson pointed out that the answer appears dictated by statute. Section 15-1-35 of the Mississippi Code lists eight torts for which suit must be filed within one year, and intentional infliction of emotional distress is not among them. "It requires no analysis or particular legal insight to observe that the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress is not included in the language chosen by the Legislature," Justice Dickinson wrote. "Thus, the statute itself provides no support for the majority's holding."

In fairness, the majority rested its conclusion on authority holding "that where a statute enumerates and specifies the subject of things upon which it is to operate, it is to be construed as excluding from its effect all those things . . . not of like kind or classification as those enumerated." Still, none of the torts listed in Section 15-1-35 are intimately related to intentional infliction of emotional distress; the only thing it has in common with the statute's delineations is that it, like most of those causes of action, is an intentional tort. 

That raises the question, of course, as to whether this decision lumps all intentional torts into Section 15-1-35's one-year limitations period. The better argument is that it does:

Fluor Daniels Servs. Corp. at ¶26.

And ultimately, that broader consequence may lead to the biggest judicial mess of all. Doubtlessly, there are a lot of unfinished complaints out there for intentional torts that rest on causes of action that accrued between one and three years ago, and they're just sitting on the desks of attorneys who have figured they had two years or so to get them filed. What happens to those causes of action is anybody's guess, but suffice it to say that it's a mess waiting to happen.