Hensgens v. Deere & Co.
| Decision Date | 12 April 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-4396,88-4396 |
| Citation | 869 F.2d 879 |
| Parties | Elizabeth M. HENSGENS, Individually, Etc., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. DEERE & COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Leslie J. Schiff, Sandoz, Sandoz & Schiff, Opelousas, La., for plaintiffs-appellants.
James T. Guglielmo, Charles M. Jarrell, Opelousas, La., for amicus curiae Schiff, Sandoz, et al.
L. Lane Roy, Roy & Hattan, Lafayette, La., for defendant-appellee.
John E. McElligott, Jr., Kyle L. Gideon, Davidson, Meaux, Sonnier & McElligott, Lafayette, La., for amicus curiae Gueydan Tractor, etc.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Before WISDOM, GARWOOD, and JOLLY, Circuit Judges.
In this case the original complaint named John Deere Corporation as the defendant. The defendant's correct corporate name is Deere & Company. This misnomer raises the question whether under Louisiana law the complaint, timely filed in a court of competent jurisdiction and venue, interrupted the one-year liberative prescription applicable to delictual actions. We conclude that the misnaming of the defendant in the original complaint was not so egregious as to compel the court to void the effect of a timely filed suit to interrupt prescription of the plaintiff's claim.
The facts relevant to this appeal are undisputed. 1 On March 6, 1985 Charles Hensgens, Jr. was killed when he jump-started his tractor in gear and it rolled over him. Elizabeth Hensgens, his widow, filed suit individually and on her children's behalf, in a Louisiana state court on February 25, 1986. The suit was against John Deere Corporation, certainly a name very similar to but not the exact name of the defendant. The citation was served on April 28, 1986 on Deere & Company, a Delaware Corporation not qualified to do business in Louisiana or registered with the Secretary of State. Deere & Company filed a petition to remove the suit to federal court on May 27, 1986. Hensgens amended her petition to name Deere & Company as the defendant on June 3, 1986, and on June 9, 1986 the amended petition was served on the defendant by certified mail in accordance with the Louisiana Long Arm Statute. The plaintiff later amended her petition to add as a defendant Gueydan Tractor and Equipment Co., from whom Hensgens had bought the tractor.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of both defendants on the ground that the plaintiff's suit was barred by Louisiana's one-year prescriptive period for torts. On appeal this Court vacated the judgment for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and remanded the case to the district court to consider whether the addition of Gueydan, a nondiverse party, was proper. On remand, the district court denied the plaintiff's motion to add Gueydan and again granted summary judgment to Deere & Company on its prescription argument.
In its second order granting Deere & Company summary judgment the district court ruled that under Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(c) and the Supreme Court's recent opinion in Schiavone v. Fortune, 2 the plaintiff's amended petition changing the name of the party sued from "John Deere Corp." to "Deere & Company" did not relate back to the date the original petition was filed, and therefore, the plaintiff's claim was time-barred. We agree with the district court and the defendant that federal law regarding relation back of amendments to pleadings is controlling in diversity cases in federal court. Relation back of the amendment, however, is not a disputed issue in this case--if the filing of the original petition interrupted prescription. Whether the plaintiff's original petition naming John Deere Corp. as the defendant interrupted prescription against Deere & Company is a question to be resolved by Louisiana substantive law.
In diversity cases, of course, federal courts apply state statutes of limitations and related state law governing tolling of the limitation period. 3 The Louisiana Civil Code provides Delictual actions are subject to a liberative prescription of one year.
La.Civ.Code Ann. art. 3492 (West Supp.1989).
The methods of interrupting this prescriptive period are set forth in Civil Code article 3462:
Prescription is interrupted ... when the obligee commences action against the obligor, in a court of competent jurisdiction and venue. If action is commenced in an incompetent court, or in an improper venue, prescription is interrupted only as to a defendant served by process within the prescriptive period.
This case involves the first method of interruption, the commencement of an action against the defendant.
Article 421 of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure defines a civil action as "a demand for the enforcement of a legal right". 4 This article states that an action is "commenced by the filing of a pleading presenting the demand to a court of competent jurisdiction". 5 This method of interruption of prescription focuses on the obligee's necessity to act within a limitation period, not on notice to the obligor, except in the sense that the filing of an action is notice. The act of filing interrupts prescription and although service of process on the defendant may not be delayed indefinitely, 6 it need not occur within the limitation period. 7 Moreover, the pleading filed need not be free of technical deficiencies. 8 Louisiana courts have long recognized that a citation insufficient to serve as the basis for a judgment may nevertheless suffice for the purpose of interrupting prescription. 9 This approach accords with the Louisiana rule that prescription statutes are construed strictly with ambiguities resolved in favor of preserving the cause of action. 10
The liberal view of allowing imperfect pleadings to satisfy the commencement of action requirement and the law permitting service of process on the defendant after the prescriptive period has run is grounded in the civilian concept of the nature of liberative prescription. Liberative prescription bars legal actions to enforce a right where the holder of the right "has neglected to bring the action or exercise the right during a certain period of time". 11 As Baudry-Lancantinerie & Tissier point out, "[t]he basis for interruption of liberative prescription is not so much the knowledge of [or notice to] the debtor as the action of the creditor". 12 In the common law "the linchpin" may be "notice [to the obligor] and notice within the limitations period". 13 But in the civil law, the linchpin is "when the obligee commences action against the obligor, in a court of competent jurisdiction and venue". La.Civ.Code Ann. art. 3462.
Perhaps the quintessential example of Louisiana law allowing an obligee to protect his rights without having simultaneously to notify the obligor is the provision specifying that suit against one joint tortfeasor or solidary obligor interrupts prescription against all other joint tortfeasors or solidary obligors. 14 One justification suggested for dispensing with legal notice to unnamed joint tortfeasors is based on Louisiana's one-year prescriptive period for delictual actions. The interruption rule makes equitable the short limitation period by allowing a plaintiff to protect his rights against an unknown joint tortfeasor by bringing an action against the known defendant. 15
Despite this policy of safeguarding a plaintiff's rights, there remains some confusion in Louisiana case law regarding the effect on prescription of a petition containing a misdescription or misnomer of a defendant. We are mindful that some decisions applying Civil Code article 3462 and its predecessors and Code of Civil Procedure article 1153 may be construed as militating against a conclusion that the original petition interrupted prescription in this case. 16 Those cases are factually distinguishable, however, and some, such as Majesty v. Comet-Mercury-Ford Co. of Lorain Michigan, 17 and its progeny 18 have been overruled by the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision in Ray v. Alexandria Mall. 19 Of the remaining viable decisions discussing this and the closely related issue of relation back of amended pleadings, a heavy majority support a finding that the plaintiff's petition naming "John Deere Corp." interrupted prescription against "Deere & Co." 20
This case is factually similar to Peyton v. Torg Films Co. 21 In that case the plaintiff filed suit on a tort claim about two weeks before prescription would have run and named as a defendant "Torg Films Company". Service of process was attempted under the provisions of the Louisiana Long Arm Statute. 22 About three months later, in response to a declinatory exception of insufficient citation and service of process filed by "Torg Film Services, Inc.", the plaintiff amended his petition to correct the name of the defendant. The court, distinguishing the facts of Peyton from the then valid precedent of Majesty v. Comet-Mercury-Ford Co. of Lorain, Mich. held that the plaintiff's original petition interrupted prescription against the defendant, Torg Film Services, Inc. The court noted several facts that supported treating the misnomer as a nonfatal defect for the purpose of interrupting prescription. First, the defendant, Torg Film Services, Inc., was not qualified to do business in Louisiana and thus, the plaintiff could not have easily ascertained the correct name by making an inquiry of the Secretary of State. Second, the name used in the petition, "Torg Films Company", was very similar to the defendant's correct name, "Torg Film Services, Inc." Third, because Torg Films Company was not a separate legal entity the plaintiff did not simply sue the wrong party. The court's ruling was in accordance with the policy of Louisiana courts not to penalize a plaintiff whose counsel makes a minor error causing no prejudice or injustice to the defendant, especially where some blame for the...
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