Hayden v. Ford Motor Company

• Decision Date: 31 May 1974
• Docket Number: No. 73-2066.,73-2066.
• Citation: 497 F.2d 1292
• Parties: Laura HAYDEN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

497 F.2d 1292 (1974)

Laura HAYDEN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 73-2066.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued April 12, 1974.

Decided May 31, 1974.

Robert B. Spurlock and Robert L. Brown, Bucyrus, Ohio, for appellant; Cory, Brown & Pfeifer, Bucyrus, Ohio, Robert B. Spurlock, Myers, Spurlock, Sears & Pry, Bucyrus, Ohio, Lawrence R. Elleman, Dinsmore, Shohl, Coates & Deupree, Cincinnati, Ohio, on brief.

Michael R. Gallagher, Cleveland, Ohio, for appellee; James F. Sweeney, Cleveland, Ohio, on brief; Hauxhurst, Sharp, Mollison & Gallagher, Cleveland, Ohio, of counsel.

Before EDWARDS, MILLER and ENGEL, Circuit Judges.

WILLIAM E. MILLER, Circuit Judge.

On January 9, 1970 the plaintiff, Laura Hayden, on the basis of diversity of citizenship filed in the court below her personal injury action against the Ford Motor Company, alleging that she was injured on June 20, 1965, while driving a pick-up truck manufactured by the defendant. The accident occurred in Arizona while the plaintiff, an employee of the Crawford County, Ohio, Children's Home, was transporting children from the Home on a trip through the Western United States. She alleged that a malfunction of the right wheel assembly of the Ford truck caused it to become uncontrollable. As a result it overturned and plaintiff, as she alleges, sustained severe and permanent injuries.

On June 21, 1967, one year and eleven months after the accident, and almost thirty-one months prior to the filing of the present action in federal court, the plaintiff filed a similar action against Ford Motor Company in the Common Pleas Court of Crawford County, Ohio. Since Ohio has a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury law suits,¹ the state action was timely filed. The federal action, however, was not filed until after the lapse of the two-year period prescribed by the Ohio statute. When the action was filed in federal court the state action was pending for trial on the merits.

The defendant, on September 21, 1970, filed its answer in federal court, pleading to the merits but making no reference to the statute of limitations defense. On December 20, 1971 the plaintiff, after engaging in extensive discovery procedures going to the substantive issue, voluntarily dismissed the pending state court action without prejudice.

Almost six months later, on June 15, 1972, the defendant applied for leave to file an amended answer to assert the Ohio statute of limitations as a defense. On September 22, 1972, the district court granted the defendant's motion and the statute was then formally pleaded as a bar to plaintiff's action.

Plaintiff thereafter moved to amend her complaint principally for the purpose of adding a claim for punitive damages. The motion having been granted, an amended complaint was filed accordingly. In response to the amended complaint the defendant filed an amended answer, again pleading the statute of limitations. On August 15, 1973, pursuant to a motion by the defendant, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, upon the ground that plaintiff's action was barred by the Ohio statute of limitations.

Under Ohio law as well as under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense which must be pleaded as such. In this case, Ford Motor Company did not attempt to raise the statute of limitations as a bar to the litigation until almost thirty months after the filing of the action in federal court, nor until six months after the plaintiff had voluntarily dismissed the state court action then pending on its merits.²

Normally, federal courts favor liberality in permitting amendments to pleadings. Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides:

"(a) Amendments. A party may amend his pleading once as a matter of course at any time before a responsive pleading is served or, if the pleading is one to which no responsive pleading is permitted and the action has not been placed upon the trial calendar, he may so amend it at any time within 20 days after it is served. Otherwise a party may amend his pleading only by leave of court or by written consent of the adverse party; and leave shall be freely given when justice so requires. * * *" (Emphasis supplied)

When "justice so requires" is within the trial court's broad range of discretion. The plaintiff argues here that the district court abused its discretion by allowing the defendant to amend its answer despite substantial prejudice to the plaintiff. The defendant urges that the question of whether the district court should have granted the defendant's motion for leave to amend was rendered moot when the plaintiff filed an amended complaint to which the defendant was required to respond, thus allowing the defendant another opportunity to plead the statute of limitations. At first glance, this argument would appear not to be devoid of merit. Yet upon closer scrutiny, we are convinced that the disposition of the critical issue in this case should not be made upon the basis of a federal pleading analysis. This approach would require solution of two pleading problems: First, it would be necessary to determine whether the district court abused its discretion in allowing the defendant to file its first amended answer raising the limitations defense. Secondly, it would be necessary to inquire whether the plaintiff's amended complaint removed any problem concerning the allowance of the second amended answer. This analysis might conceivably result in a disposition of this case that would totally disregard the true purposes of statutes of limitations as well as the circumstances under which limitation periods may be waived. Such a method of solving our present problem by focusing upon the rules of pleading, as the district court in large part did in this case, would be reminiscent of the days of common law pleading when the strict rules and forms of pleading were sovereign and frequently were permitted to prevail over substance.

The more basic issue here addresses itself to the nature and scope of a limitations statute as a defense in a civil action as well as to the question of when and under what state of facts the defense must be considered as waived.

If Ohio law has answered these questions, we would be required to follow it. Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1937); Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079 (1945). Our examination of the Ohio decisions has failed to disclose any case defining the fundamental nature of the limitations defense. It is true that language appears in the Ohio Supreme Court's opinion in Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Hensgen, 22 Ohio St.2d 83, 87, 258 N.E.2d 237 (...