Henry v. Piatchek

Decision Date13 August 2019
Docket NumberNo. SC 97385,SC 97385
Parties Delores HENRY, Plaintiff, v. Paul PIATCHEK, et al., Respondents, Darrell Williams, Sr., Appellant.
CourtMissouri Supreme Court

The father was represented by Matthew C. Casey, Anne Brockland and Matthew J. Devoti of Casey, Devoti & Brockland PC in St. Louis, (314) 421-0763.

The police defendants were represented by Denise McElvein and Deputy Solicitor General Peter T. Reed of the attorney general’s office in St. Louis, (573) 751-3321.

Laura Denvir Stith, Judge

Darrell Williams Sr. appeals from the circuit court’s overruling of his Rule 74.06(b) motion to set aside the dismissal of a wrongful death suit filed by his deceased son’s grandmother and the overruling of his motion to intervene in that suit. Because he failed to comply with Rule 52.12 governing intervention and his motion was never ruled on prior to the grandmother’s voluntary dismissal of her suit, he never became a party to the grandmother’s suit. Rule 74.06(b) does not authorize a non-party to file a motion to set aside the judgment. Moreover, there was no judgment to be set aside because the grandmother voluntarily dismissed her suit and that dismissal took effect immediately upon filing, without order of the court, under Rule 67.02(a). Accordingly, the circuit court did not err in overruling Williams' motion to set aside the dismissal of the grandmother’s suit.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In November 2009, the police shot and killed Darrell Williams1 after a high-speed chase. Because of the circumstances of the chase, members of Darrell’s family were suspicious of wrongdoing by the police. Darrell’s grandmother, Delores Henry, quickly filed a petition alleging wrongful death in January 2010. In her petition, Ms. Henry claimed she was Darrell’s "next of kin," but that was not the case. Darrell was also survived by his father, Darrell Williams Sr., and his mother, Kathryn Love. The parties agree that, because Darrell’s mother and father were alive, under section 537.080,2 his grandmother was not a proper plaintiff to bring the wrongful death suit. But the grandmother nonetheless filed suit, perhaps because both parents were incarcerated at the time of Darrell’s death. The defendants filed an answer to the grandmother’s petition, and the case proceeded without addressing her authority to bring suit under section 537.080.3

Beginning in August 2010, six months after the grandmother filed her suit, and periodically over the next nine months, while incarcerated on unrelated crimes, Mr. Williams sent the court at least six letters. Identifying himself in the letters as Darrell’s father, on August 30, 2010, he asked whether a complaint had been filed for his son’s death and, if it had, whether the circuit court could provide him with a copy; on November 12, 2010, he asked for a copy of the docket sheet and the contact information for Ms. Henry’s attorney; on November 22, 2010, and again on December 16, 2010, he said he wanted to become a plaintiff and asked for the current discovery; and on February 25, 2011, he requested the docket sheet. The record shows each of Mr. Williams' letters was docketed, and the circuit court sent Mr. Williams some of the information he had requested.

Finally, in May 2011, Mr. Williams sent the circuit court a handwritten letter attaching a handwritten motion to join in the grandmother’s suit. The motion had the caption to the grandmother’s case and, in full, stated:

Comes now, plaintiff Darrell Williams, pro se, requesting to become a plaintiff in cause #1022-CC00155, for the following reason:
Plaintiff Darrell Williams Sr[.], is the father of the deceased Darrell Williams Jr.
Wherefore plaintiff requests that this motion be granted.

While Mr. Williams' motion conveyed his desire to become a plaintiff and should have been understood as an attempt to intervene, it failed to comply with the requirements of Rule 52.12(c), which provides:

A person desiring to intervene shall serve a motion upon all parties affected thereby. The motion shall state the grounds therefor, and shall be accompanied by a pleading setting forth the claim or defense for which intervention is sought. The same procedure shall be followed when a statute of this state gives a right to intervene.

Mr. Williams did not serve his motion on the other parties to the lawsuit, nor was it accompanied by a pleading setting out the claim for which intervention was sought, as required by Rule 52.12(c).

The father did not attempt to correct the deficiencies in his motion in the succeeding three years in which the grandmother’s suit was pending prior to April 2014, when, shortly before trial was to occur, the grandmother voluntarily dismissed her suit. Her voluntary dismissal became effective upon filing under Rule 67.02.4 The father did not argue to the circuit court that he still had a live claim due to his pending motion to intervene, nor did he attempt at any time to get a ruling on the motion or otherwise correct the motion’s deficiencies or object to the voluntary dismissal or attempt to appeal it.5

By the time the grandmother dismissed her lawsuit, the three-year statute of limitations on the wrongful death claim had run. § 537.100.1. But Rule 67.02(c) provides that a voluntary dismissal under Rule 67.02(a) is without prejudice, and under section 537.100, the grandmother had one year in which to refile her lawsuit because her original lawsuit had been timely filed.6

While the grandmother did not refile within one year, the mother did attempt to file a wrongful death suit in August 2014, just four months after the grandmother’s voluntary dismissal. The mother’s suit was dismissed the following year after the defendants filed a motion arguing the mother could not take advantage of the grandmother’s right to refile her suit within one year because the mother had not been a party to the prior suit.

The court of appeals affirmed the circuit court’s dismissal of the mother’s petition in Love v. Piatchek, 503 S.W.3d 318 (Mo. App. E.D. 2016) . Love held that, because the grandmother was never a proper party to bring the wrongful death suit, her suit was a nullity and could not relate back to the grandmother’s prior suit or take advantage of the one-year window provided by section 537.100.1. Id. at 320.7 A concurring opinion suggested a better mechanism for seeking relief would have been to seek to set aside the dismissal of the grandmother’s original suit under Rule 74.06(b). Id. at 320 n.1 (Van Amburg, J., concurring).

A few months later, but more than one year after the grandmother voluntarily dismissed her suit, Mr. Williams obtained counsel and filed a Rule 74.06(b)(5) motion to set aside the judgment in the grandmother’s original action and to intervene in that suit. Rule 74.06(b) provides in relevant part:

On motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party or his legal representative from a final judgment or order for the following reasons: ... (5) the judgment has been satisfied, released, or discharged, or a prior judgment upon which it is based has been reversed or otherwise vacated, or it is no longer equitable that the judgment remain in force.

(Emphasis added). Mr. Williams argued it was not equitable for grandmother’s voluntary dismissal to remain in place because he filed a timely motion to intervene in the suit prior to its dismissal and prior to the running of the statute of limitations. He asserted that because under section 537.080, a parent is entitled to sue for his or her unmarried child’s death, and because Rule 52.12(a) permitted him to intervene as of right, see Martin v. Busch, 360 S.W.3d 854, 857 (Mo. App. E.D. 2011) , the circuit court had no authority to do anything other than sustain his motion to intervene. Therefore, he argued, he should be treated as a party just as if he had been granted intervention.

The circuit court held that it had no authority to sustain Mr. Williams' Rule 74.06 motion because grandmother had voluntarily dismissed her suit as permitted by Rule 67.02(a). This meant there was no suit for Mr. Williams to join and no judgment for the circuit court to set aside. Mr. Williams appealed. After decision by the court of appeals, this Court granted transfer. Mo. Const. art. V, sec. 10.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

This Court reviews the overruling of a Rule 74.06(b) motion under the abuse of discretion standard. In re Marriage of Hendrix, 183 S.W.3d 582, 587 (Mo. banc 2006) . "This Court interprets its rules by applying the same principles used for interpreting statutes." In re Hess, 406 S.W.3d 37, 43 (Mo. banc 2013), quoting, Buemi v. Kerckhoff, 359 S.W.3d 16, 20 (Mo. banc 2011). "Statutory interpretation is a question of law and is subject to de novo review." Lindquist v. Mid Am. Orthopaedic Surgery, Inc., 224 S.W.3d 593, 594-95 (Mo. banc 2007).

III. A NON-PARTY CANNOT SEEK TO SET ASIDE A JUDGMENT, NOR IS A VOLUNTARY DISMISSAL A JUDGMENT

Mr. Williams cannot bring a Rule 74.06(b) motion to set aside the grandmother’s voluntary dismissal because he was never a party to her suit. Rule 74.06(b) provides, "On motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party or his legal representative from a final judgment or order...." Rule 74.06(b) by its terms authorizes only parties or their legal representatives to seek relief from a final judgment or order.

This Court’s prior cases have held a person who has sought to intervene but whose motion to intervene has not been ruled upon because the person failed to comply with the rules governing such motions has not become a party to the case and, therefore, has no right to file a motion to be relieved of the final judgment. A case almost directly on point is State ex rel. Wolfner v. Dalton, 955 S.W.2d 928 (Mo. banc 1997) . In Wolfner , three would-be defendants filed a motion to intervene but did not attach a pleading setting forth their claims or defenses as required by Rule 52.12(c) or seek a ruling...

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