## Facts

- Sylvia and Edward Nierman, Massachusetts residents, reserved a stay at the Hyatt Regency at Dallas–Fort Worth Airport through Massachusetts travel agents.
- On January 15, 1994, Sylvia Nierman was injured in Texas while attempting to board a motorized transport cart operated by a Hyatt employee on the hotel concourse.
- The complaint alleged the employee negligently accelerated the cart before Sylvia was safely seated; Edward asserted loss of consortium.
- Hyatt Corporation is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Illinois; it managed hotels in Texas and at least one in Massachusetts and solicited reservations through a nationwide system.
- The parties agreed Texas substantive negligence law governed liability; the dispute was whether Texas’s two-year or Massachusetts’s three-year statute of limitations applied.
- The Niermans filed suit in Massachusetts on January 15, 1997 (three years after the accident).

## Issues

1. In a Massachusetts tort action for an injury occurring in Texas, should Massachusetts apply Texas’s two-year statute of limitations or Massachusetts’s three-year statute of limitations?
2. Under Massachusetts conflict-of-laws analysis, when may a foreign limitations period control because the foreign state has the more significant relationship and Massachusetts has no substantial interest in allowing the claim?

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court held that Texas’s two-year statute of limitations controlled and barred the action.
- The court affirmed summary judgment for Hyatt and rejected the intermediate appellate conclusion that Massachusetts’s three-year period applied.
- Because the complaint was filed three years after the accident, the claims were untimely under Texas law.

## Legal Principles

- In multistate tort cases, Massachusetts may apply another state’s statute of limitations when that state has the more significant relationship to the occurrence and the parties.
- A foreign limitations period may control where applying the Massachusetts period would serve no substantial Massachusetts interest, even if the plaintiffs are Massachusetts residents and sued in Massachusetts.
- In assessing which limitations period applies, courts consider the locus of injury and conduct, the involved states’ governmental interests, and the parties’ connections to each state; the state where the tort occurred generally has a strong regulatory interest in time-barring stale claims arising within its borders.

## Conclusion

Massachusetts applied Texas’s shorter statute of limitations to a negligence and loss-of-consortium action arising from a Texas hotel incident, concluding Texas had the most significant relationship and Massachusetts lacked a substantial interest in extending its longer filing period to preserve an otherwise time-barred claim.


Nierman v. Hyatt Corp., 441 Mass. 693, 808 N.E.2d 290 (2004)