Desantis v. Prelle

• Decision Date: 24 February 2006
• Docket Number: No. 2004-269-Appeal.,2004-269-Appeal.
• Citation: 891 A.2d 873
• Parties: Angelo DeSANTIS et al. v. Wallace PRELLE et al.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

891 A.2d 873

Angelo DeSANTIS et al. v. Wallace PRELLE et al.

No. 2004-269-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

February 24, 2006.

Christopher M. Rawson, Providence, for Plaintiffs.

Kevin M. Cain, Providence, for Defendants.

Present: WILLIAMS, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, SUTTELL, and ROBINSON, JJ.

OPINION

Justice SUTTELL, for the Court.

May an injured party initiate a direct action against a tortfeasor's insurance carrier under G.L.1956 § 27-7-2 after the expiration of the three-year limitations period applicable to personal injury actions? In the context of this case, the Superior Court relied on clearly established precedents and answered in the negative, thereby granting the insurance carrier's motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure for failing to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Although we treat the insurer's motion as one for summary judgment, we nevertheless affirm.

Facts and Procedural History

On May 10, 2002, plaintiffs, Angelo and Vicki DeSantis, filed suit against Wallace Prelle, alleging that he was liable for personal injuries and loss of consortium as the result of his negligent operation of a motor vehicle on May 28, 1999. It is undisputed that they filed their complaint eighteen days before the statute of limitations expired. Unbeknownst to plaintiffs, however, Mr. Prelle himself had expired on August 1, 2000.

The plaintiffs' counsel first learned of Mr. Prelle's death on June 11, 2002, and on July 11, 2002, the attempted service of process was returned non est inventus. The plaintiffs moved to substitute Mr. Prelle's "insurance company, MetLife Auto & Home Insurance Co., in place of the defendant," which motion was granted on October 31, 2002. By leave of the court, the plaintiffs subsequently filed a second amended complaint, which named as defendants "MetLife Auto & Home Insurance Co., alias, and/or Metropolitan Property and Casualty Co." (Metropolitan) in order to reflect the insurer's correct corporate identity.

Metropolitan then filed a motion to dismiss plaintiffs' second amended complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), promoting three grounds for dismissal: (1) that Metropolitan did not provide automobile liability insurance coverage for Mr. Prelle on the date of the alleged accident; (2) that plaintiffs did not comply with the provisions of § 27-7-2;¹ and (3) that the statute of limitations provided in G.L.1956 § 9-1-14(b) barred plaintiffs from bringing a claim against Metropolitan under § 27-7-2. Metropolitan, however, withdrew its first ground at the May 17, 2004 hearing on its motion to dismiss.² At the hearing, the motion justice requested an affidavit from Metropolitan setting forth when it first learned of Mr. Prelle's death, noting: "perhaps you can see my concern that what if the defendant insurance company is participating in this by not telling the plaintiff the defendant passed away." The motion justice reserved decision on Metropolitan's motion in anticipation of the affidavit, which Metropolitan submitted on June 2, 2004. The affidavit, prepared by a senior claim representative, said that Metropolitan first learned of Mr. Prelle's death on May 24, 2002, when an unnamed claim representative contacted the Washington County Superior Court clerk's office to confirm that plaintiffs had, in fact, filed a lawsuit. The claim representative then attempted to contact Mr. Prelle, whose wife informed the claim representative of Mr. Prelle's death. According to the affidavit, Metropolitan had no knowledge before May 24, 2002 that Mr. Prelle had died.³

On June 24, 2004, the motion justice issued a written decision granting dismissal on the sole ground that the statute of limitations barred plaintiffs from bringing suit against Metropolitan. The court held that our recent opinion in Rivers v. American Commerce Insurance Co., 836 A.2d 200 (R.I.2003), was controlling upon the facts presented in the case before it. In the decision, the motion justice referred in some detail to the representations made in Metropolitan's affidavit and in an affidavit submitted by plaintiffs. The court entered judgment on July 12, 2004, from which plaintiffs timely appealed.⁴

Standard of Review

The threshold issue before us is the appropriate standard under which we should review this appeal. The Superior Court's decision in this case dismissed plaintiffs' second amended complaint against Metropolitan for failing to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6). The motion justice, however, in his decision, considered facts sworn to in affidavits presented by both Metropolitan and plaintiffs. Specifically, the motion justice wrote that the court "requested an affidavit and has garnered the following additional facts from the new affidavits and the court file," and went on to recount those garnered facts with emphasis upon the dates the parties respectively learned of Mr. Prelle's death. Furthermore, the motion justice relied on these additional facts, which the parties did not include in their pleadings, in reaching the conclusion that the statute of limitations barred plaintiffs from bringing a direct action against Metropolitan. At the hearing on the motion to dismiss, the court expressed concern that Metropolitan "may have realized that Mr. Prelle had passed on and was setting a trap" — a concern that the motion justice also referred to in his decision. The facts sworn to in Metropolitan's affidavit caused the motion justice to apply this Court's analysis in Rivers, which the motion justice held to be controlling and fatal to plaintiffs' suit. Accordingly, because the court considered material beyond the four corners of the complaint, Metropolitan's motion to dismiss should have been treated as a motion for summary judgment under Rule 56(b) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure. See Rule 12(b) ("If on a motion asserting the defense numbered (6) to dismiss for failure of the pleading to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, matters outside the pleading are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion shall be treated as one for summary judgment and disposed of as provided in Rule 56 * * *."); Elgar v. National Continental/Progressive Insurance Co., 849 A.2d 324, 326 (R.I.2004); Bowen Court Associates v. Ernst & Young, LLP, 818 A.2d 721, 726 (R.I.2003).

In treating the Superior Court's entry of dismissal for Metropolitan as though it were one of summary judgment we review plaintiffs' appeal de novo. Elgar, 849 A.2d at 326. This Court "will affirm [a grant of summary] judgment only if, after reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, we conclude that no genuine issue of material fact exists and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Tanner v. Town Council of East Greenwich, 880 A.2d 784, 791 (R.I.2005). Furthermore, the nonmoving party bears "the burden of proving by competent evidence the existence of a disputed issue of material fact and cannot rest upon mere allegations or denials in the pleadings, mere conclusions or mere legal opinions." Id. (quoting Lucier v. Impact Recreation, Ltd., 864 A.2d 635, 638 (R.I.2005)).

Discussion

The plaintiffs raise a number of issues on appeal. By treating this appeal as a review of a grant of summary judgment, we already have indirectly disposed of the first contention, which argues that the motion justice incorrectly applied the standard for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6). In addition, plaintiffs assert that they have satisfied all four conditions of § 27-7-2 and also that, under Rule 15(c) of the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure, their amended complaint "relates back to the date of the original pleading," which date was before the statute of limitations expired.

Recognizing that our recent opinion in Rivers represents a formidable hurdle in their efforts to pursue an action against Metropolitan, plaintiffs attempt to distinguish the facts in the two cases. Conversely, defendants rely on Rivers in arguing that § 9-1-14(b)'s three-year statute of limitations for the commencement of actions alleging personal injury bars plaintiffs' suit against Metropolitan. In Rivers, we held that an injured party may not proceed directly against an insurer pursuant to § 27-7-2 after the statute of limitations governing the claim has expired, notwithstanding return of process against the insured tortfeasor non est inventus. Rivers, 836 A.2d at 205. Because we discern no fact in the present case sufficiently distinguishable from those in Rivers to warrant a departure from our reasoning in that case, we hold that plaintiffs' suit against Metropolitan was filed out of time and that Metropolitan is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Rivers involved a claim stemming from an automobile collision between Shannon Rivers and Joselito Quesada on January 4, 1999. Rivers, 836 A.2d at 202. Ms. Rivers filed a complaint against Mr. Quesada on November 29, 2001, but attempts to serve the summons and complaint upon him were returned non est inventus. Id. Thereafter, on March 19, 2002, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint naming American Commerce Insurance Company (ACIC) as a codefendant to the suit, alleging that ACIC, as Mr. Quesada's insurer at the time of the collision, was properly joined as a party in accordance with § 27-7-2. ACIC promptly filed a motion for partial summary judgment, and argued that § 9-1-14(b) barred the plaintiff's claims by imposing a three-year statute of limitations that accrued at the time of the collision.⁵ Rivers, 836 A.2d at 202.

This Court held that Ms. Rivers could not bring a direct claim against ACIC pursuant to § 27-7-2 after the three-year statute of limitations provided in § 9-1-14(b) expired. See Rivers, 836 A.2d at 205. Our analysis began by recognizing that "a cause of action accrues and the applicable statute of limitations begins to run at the time of the injury to...