Zimmie v. Calfee, Halter & Griswold

In Zimmie v. Calfee, Halter & Griswold (1989), 43 Ohio St.3d 54, 58, 538 N.E.2d 398, the Supreme Court found that the invalidation of a prenuptial agreement was the cognizable event for purposes of the discovery rule even though an appeal was pending on the ruling and damages were not fully ascertainable. Zimmie, 43 Ohio St.3d at 58 (where termination of the relationship had already occurred). The Court stated that an injured person need not be aware of the full extent of the injury before there is a cognizable event. Id. It is sufficient that some noteworthy event, the cognizable event, has occurred which should alert a reasonable person that substandard representation has occurred. Id. The Court then declined to adopt a rule that one is entitled to exhaust his appeals before the statute of limitations runs. Id. Rather, the Court reiterated that each case depends on the facts involved. Id. at 58-59. The Court then upheld the grant of summary judgment in that case because the legal malpractice action was not filed until almost four years after the date the trial court invalidated the prenuptial agreement even though the plaintiff argued that he was not aware of malpractice until the appellate court's decision. Id. at 59. In Zimmie v. Calfee, Halter & Griswold (1989), 43 Ohio St.3d 54, 538 N.E.2d 398, the Ohio Supreme Court set forth the standard with respect to the statute of limitations for malpractice: "Under R.C. 2305.11(A), an action for legal malpractice accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run when there is a cognizable event whereby the client discovers or should have discovered his injury was related to his attorney's act or non-act and the client is put on notice of a need to pursue its possible remedies against the attorney, or when the attorney-client relationship for that particular transaction or undertaking terminates, whichever occurs later." The Zimmie court defined a cognizable event as an event "which should alert a reasonable person that in the course of legal representation, his attorney committed an improper act." In Zimmie v. Calfee, Halter & Griswold (1989), 43 Ohio St.3d 54, 58, 538 N.E.2d 398, the Ohio Supreme Court held that: "An action for legal malpractice accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run when there is a cognizable event whereby the client discovers or should have discovered that his injury was related to his attorney's act or non-act and the client is put on notice of a need to pursue his possible remedies against the attorney or when the attorney-client relationship for that particular transaction or undertaking terminates, whichever occurs later."