Illinois’ Contribution Law and the ‘Savings’ Statute

Illinois has a 2 year statute of limitations (SOL) for contribution claims.  Contribution applies where two or more defendants have common liability to an injured plaintiff.  740 ILCS 100/1 (Illinois’s contribution statute).

The idea is that each defendant responsible for injuring a plaintiff should pay his share of liability to the plaintiff.  Section 13-204(b) of the Code prescribes the two year limitations period for contribution claims.

Another section of the Code of Civil Procedure, 735 ILCS 5/13-207 – labelled the “savings statute” – gives a defendant extra time to file an otherwise time-barred counterclaim or set-off under certain circumstances.

This statute protects against last minute filings by plaintiffs that would prevent a defendant from having a reasonable opportunity to assert counterclaims against that plaintiff.

Example: Assume plaintiff has personal injury claim against defendant and defendant has defamation claim against plaintiff arising from same underlying facts.  Illinois has a 2 year limitations period for personal injury claims (735 ILCS 5/13-202) and 1 year period for defamation (735 ILCS 5/13-201).  If plaintiff files personal injury suit on day 729 after he is injured and serves defendant some weeks later, the defendant’s defamation counterclaim would normally be barred since well over 1 year has elapsed from the underlying injury.  But, under the savings statute, the defendant now has 1 year from the date of service of plaintiff’s complaint to sue for defamation.

But consider this fact pattern: plaintiff serves defendant 1 on January 1, 2013 and serves defendant 2 on January 15, 2013.  Defendant 1 does not file any counterclaims.  Defendant 2 sues defendant 1 for contribution on January 14, 2015, the day before the 2-year SOL expires and defendant 1 is served on February 1, 2015.

Q:  Can defendant 1 now file a counterclaim for contribution against defendant 2 on or after February 1, 2015? Remember, defendant 1 was served with the underlying complaint on January 1, 2013 – so under 13-204(b)(see above), defendant 1 would have had until January 1, 2015 to file contribution counterclaims.  Clearly, defendant 1’s contribution action is time-barred by the 2-year SOL, right?

A: Wrong.  An off-shoot of the above fact pattern is exactly what the Illinois Supreme Court addressed in Barragan v. Casco case, 216 Ill.2d 435 (2005).  There, the Court reversed the Appellate Court and held that a contractor’s contribution counterclaim against a co-defendant architect could proceed even though it was time-barred under 13-204’s two-year SOL for contribution claims.

In Barragan, the plaintiff served the defendant contractor on July 25, 1997 and the defendant architect on September 15, 1997.  Under 13-204(b), the contractor and architect would have until July 25, 1999 and September 15, 1999 respectively to sue for contribution..  The architect filed its contribution claim against the contractor on July 29, 1999 – about six weeks before the 2-year limitations period expired.  The contractor filed its responsive contribution claim against the architect in December, 2000 – about 3.5 years after it was served by the underlying plaintiff and 16 months after the contribution 2-year limitations period expired.

The Court still permitted the contractor’s counterclaim to go forward under Code Section 13-207, the savings provision.  The  Court ruled that Section 13-207’s savings provision trumped the two-year SOL contained in Section 13-204(b) for contribution claims, noting that the contractor and architect were in an adversarial posture and that the contractor’s counterclaim was responsive to the architect’s.

Take-away: Personal injury defendants should be cognizant of Barragan and the interplay between 13-204 and 13-207.  If you – as a defendant – sue another defendant for contribution, be prepared for that defendant to counter-sue you for contribution beyond the 2-year limitations period.  This seems to penalize the timely filing defendant by allowing the contribution counter-defendant to circumvent the 2-year SOL for contribution.