McCants v. Ford Motor Co., Inc., 85-7098

• Citation: 781 F.2d 855
• Decision Date: 03 February 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-7098,85-7098
• Parties: Reta L. McCANTS, As Administratrix of the Estate of Johnny L. McCants, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

Page 855

781 F.2d 855

4 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1116

Reta L. McCANTS, As Administratrix of the Estate of Johnny

L. McCants, deceased, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, INC., Defendant-Appellant.

No. 85-7098.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eleventh Circuit.

Feb. 3, 1986.

Bradley, Arant, Rose & White, Jere F. White, Jr. and M. Christian King, Birmingham, Ala., for defendant-appellant.

Leon Garmon, Gadsden, Ala., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before HILL and CLARK, Circuit Judges, and MOYE ^*, Chief District Judge.

HILL, Circuit Judge:

This case is before the court on defendant-appellant Ford Motor Company's appeal from an order of the district court dismissing plaintiff-appellee Reta McCants' suit without prejudice pursuant to Rule 41(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

FACTS

Appellee Reta McCants, administratrix of the estate of Johnny McCants, deceased, commenced this suit against appellant Ford Motor Company in federal district court in Alabama. The action arose out of an accident in which appellee's decedent, a member of the United States Army Reserve, was killed while riding in a military jeep on a two week active duty training mission. The accident occurred in Mississippi, and the complaint sought damages under Mississippi products liability law.

The decedent was killed on July 24, 1982. Appellee filed suit against A.M. General, the company she believed had manufactured the military jeep in question, on July 20, 1983. Appellee maintains that she subsequently learned through discovery that appellant rather than A.M. General manufactured the jeep, and she sought leave to amend her action to substitute appellant as party defendant. Instead of allowing the amendment, the district court denied her motion to amend and dismissed the suit without prejudice. Appellee then filed this action, naming appellant as defendant, on November 14, 1983.

Discovery began in December of 1983 and continued through most of the following year. In January of 1985 the district court issued an order granting plaintiff-appellee's motion that the case be dismissed without prejudice. Although the action had been pending for more than a year, during which time considerable activity had taken place, the district court declined to attach any conditions to its order of dismissal.

Appellant argues on this appeal that the dismissal without prejudice and the failure to attach conditions were an abuse of the district court's discretion.

DISCUSSION

I. The Dismissal Without Prejudice

Rule 41(a)(2) allows a plaintiff, with the approval of the court, to dismiss an action voluntarily and without prejudice to future litigation at any time. The rule provides in relevant part as follows:

Except as provided in paragraph (1) of this subdivision of this rule [concerning dismissal by stipulation or by plaintiff prior to answer or motion for summary judgment], an action shall not be dismissed at the plaintiff's instance save upon order of the court and upon such terms and conditions as the court deems proper ... Unless otherwise specified in the order, a dismissal under this paragraph is without prejudice.

The purpose of the rule "is primarily to prevent voluntary dismissals which unfairly affect the other side, and to permit the imposition of curative conditions." Alamance Industries, Inc. v. Filene's, 291 F.2d 142, 146 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 831, 82 S.Ct. 53, 7 L.Ed.2d 33 (1961). Thus a district court considering a motion for dismissal without prejudice should bear in mind principally the interests of the defendant, for it is the defendant's position that the court should protect. LeCompte v. Mr. Chip, Inc., 528 F.2d 601, 604 (5th Cir.1976).

As we have noted previously, however, in most cases a dismissal should In this case, appellant argues it will suffer plain legal prejudice as a result of the district court's dismissal without prejudice, as it will lose the complete defense it claims it is afforded by the applicable statute of limitations in Alabama. Appellee, as well as the district court in which she originally filed, apparently assumed that either the six year statute of limitations applicable to wrongful death actions under Mississippi law or the two year statute applicable to wrongful death actions in Alabama would be used to determine the timeliness of her suit. As the case developed, however, and the parties dedicated further research to the legal issues involved, it became clear that a very strong argument could be made for the application of the general one year statute of limitations applicable to actions not otherwise specifically provided for in other sections of the Alabama code. See Ala.Code Sec. 6-2-39 (1977).

                be granted unless the defendant will suffer clear legal prejudice, other than the mere prospect of a subsequent lawsuit, as a result.  Id.  See also Holiday Queen Land Corp. v. Baker, 489 F.2d 1031, 1032 (5th Cir.1974);  Durham v. Florida East Coast Railway Co., 385 F.2d 366, 368 (5th Cir.1967).  Thus it is no bar to a voluntary dismissal that the plaintiff may obtain some tactical advantage over the defendant in future litigation.    Durham, 385 F.2d at 368.    See also Holiday Queen Land Corp., 489 F.2d at 1032;  Standard National Insurance Co. v. Bayless, 272 F.2d 185 (5th Cir.1959).  Rather, the district court must exercise its broad equitable discretion under Rule 41(a)(2) to weigh the relevant equities and do justice between the parties in each case, imposing such costs and attaching such conditions to the dismissal as are deemed appropriate.    American Cyanamid Company v. McGhee, 317 F.2d 295, 298 (5th Cir.1963);  Diamond v. United States, 267 F.2d 23, 25 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 834, 80 S.Ct. 85, 4 L.Ed.2d 75 (1959).  See generally 5 J. Moore, J. Lucas, & J. Wicker, Moore's Federal Practice Secs. 41.05, 41.06 (2d ed. 1985);  9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure Sec. 2364 (1971).  Dismissal on motion of the plaintiff pursuant to Rule 41(a)(2) is within the sound discretion of the district court, and its order may be reviewed only for an abuse of discretion.    La-Tex Supply Co. v. Fruehauf Trailer Div., Fruehauf Corp., 444 F.2d 1366, 1368 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 942, 92 S.Ct. 287, 30 L.Ed.2d 256 (1971);  American Cyanamid, 317 F.2d at 298
                

Appellant did not plead the one year statute of limitations in its original answer to the complaint. The issue first appears in the record in an amended answer filed July 18, 1984, in which it was simply stated that appellee's claims were barred by the applicable statute of limitations. Appellant then filed a motion for summary judgment on the basis of the one year statute on August 24, 1984; the district court denied that motion the day before it granted appellee's motion for dismissal without prejudice. Although no opinion accompanied the district court's denial of the motion for summary judgment, appellant argues that the district court, in its denial of the summary judgment motion, must have erroneously determined the one year statute of limitations to be inapplicable. Appellant thus argues not only that it suffered legal prejudice in that it lost the statute of limitations defense when the case was dismissed without prejudice, but that the district court abused its discretion when it failed even to acknowledge that important fact in its balancing of the equities.

Considering appellant's latter claim first, we are not convinced that the district court judge misunderstood the law applicable to the cause of action in this case, even if appellant correctly maintains that the one year Alabama statute should apply. Under the circumstances of this case, the district court's denial of the pending motion for summary judgment without opinion simply cannot be taken to imply that the district judge did not believe a serious statute of limitations problem to exist in this case. Rather, the more plausible interpretation of the district court's order, considered in context, is precisely to the contrary. It is clear from the face of the Rule 41(a)(2) The parties have not yet agreed on the statute of limitations applicable to this suit, as brought in Alabama, although appellant argues persuasively that Alabama's one year statute would apply. Appellee essentially argues her case on this appeal on the basis of the assumption that Alabama's one year statute bars the suit as brought in Alabama, and that a similar suit would not be time-barred in Mississippi, where appellee now intends to sue. We, too, will assume without deciding that the one year Alabama statute bars this suit as filed, but that it could be refiled in Mississippi under the statute of limitations applicable there. We thus must determine whether it constitutes an abuse of discretion for a district court to dismiss without prejudice an action that is time-barred as brought, where the purpose or effect of such dismissal is to allow the plaintiff to refile the action in a place or manner in which it is not similarly barred.

motion to dismiss that the motion was filed because of the same statute of limitations problem that prompted the motion for summary judgment. The motions were argued together before the district court, and the court ruled on them almost simultaneously. If the district court had not considered a serious statute of limitations problem to exist, the dismissal without prejudice would have been unnecessary. Thus we decline to assume, on the basis of the district court's disposition of the motion for summary judgment, that the court erroneously failed to recognize the strength of appellant's statute of limitations defense. The district court may instead have determined that it should rule on the motion for summary judgment before dismissing the action without prejudice, and thus may have ruled as it did simply to clear the way for the subsequent order of dismissal....