United States District Court, S.D. Alabama, Southern Division
ORDER
WILLIAM H. STEELE UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
This
matter comes before the Court on defendant Quality Plus
Services, Inc.'s Motion to Dismiss (doc. 50). The Motion
has been briefed, and is now ripe for disposition.
I.
Background.
Plaintiff,
Justin Wyatt, commenced this personal injury action in the
Circuit Court of Escambia County, Alabama. In his Complaint
filed on May 11, 2017, Wyatt sought to recover for severe
burn injuries sustained in a workplace accident on June 10,
2015. Specifically, Wyatt alleged that he was erecting a
scaffold when a piece of the scaffold contacted a valve above
him. The impact of the scaffold caused the valve to open,
releasing sulfuric acid or other toxic chemicals that rained
down on Wyatt's body. On that basis, Wyatt asserted
state-law claims of strict liability, negligence/wantonness,
gross negligence/wantonness, and combined/concurring
negligence against defendants, Georgia-Pacific LLC,
Georgia-Pacific Brewton LLC, and Georgia-Pacific Bleached
Board LLC (collectively, the “Georgia-Pacific
Defendants”), as well as Fictitious Party Defendants A
through I. (See doc. 1-1, at 3-10.)
Subsequently,
the Georgia-Pacific Defendants removed this action to this
District Court, predicating subject-matter jurisdiction on
the diversity provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 1332.
(See doc. 1.) Post-removal, on November 10, 2017,
Wyatt moved for leave to amend the Complaint for the stated
reason that “[s]ince the filing of the initial
Complaint, additional information has recently been
discovered that indicates QUALITY PLUS SERVICES, INC.
… is a potential defendant to this action. … As
such, Plaintiff would move this Honorable Court for leave to
amend the Complaint and add QPS as an additional
party.” (Doc. 29, ¶¶ 4-5.) On November 27,
2017, the Court entered an Order (doc. 37) granting
Wyatt's Motion for Leave to Amend. Pursuant to that
ruling, plaintiff's First Amended Complaint, which added
Quality Plus as a defendant and deleted Fictitious Party
Defendants “D” and “G, ” became
Wyatt's operative pleading. (See doc. 30.)
Upon
being served with process, Quality Plus filed a Motion to
Dismiss (doc. 50) alleging that Wyatt's claims against it
are time-barred under the applicable statute of limitations.
Plaintiff opposes the Motion to Dismiss. (See doc.
60.) For their part, the Georgia-Pacific Defendants indicate
that they have “no statement or position” on the
timeliness defense raised in that Motion. (Doc. 62.)
II.
Analysis.
It is
well-settled that “[a] Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal on
statute of limitations grounds is appropriate if it is
apparent from the face of the complaint that the claim is
time-barred.” Gonsalvez v. Celebrity Cruises
Inc., 750 F.3d 1195, 1197 (11th Cir. 2013)
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted); see also
Jacobs v. Estefan, 705 Fed.Appx. 829, 831
(11th Cir. Aug. 7, 2017) (same). In diversity
actions such as this one, the Court must apply the statute of
limitations fixed by state law. See, e.g., Mississippi
Valley Title Ins. Co. v. Thompson, 802 F.3d 1248, 1251
n.2 (11th Cir. 2015) (“Pursuant to the
Erie doctrine, a state's statutes of limitation
are substantive in nature and must be applied in a suit based
on diversity jurisdiction.”); Watkins v. Capital
City Bank, 711 Fed.Appx. 591 (11th Cir. Feb.
15, 2018) (“[a] federal court sitting in diversity must
apply the substantive law, including statutes of limitations,
of the relevant state”). Under Alabama law, Wyatt's
negligence, wantonness and strict liability claims against
Quality Plus are all subject to a two-year limitations
period. See Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l)
(“All actions for any injury to the person or rights of
another not arising from contract and not specifically
enumerated in this section must be brought within two
years.”).[1] Also, in contrast to the accrual and
tolling rules governing certain types of claims,
“Alabama has no ‘discovery rule' with respect
to negligence or wantonness actions that would toll the
running of the limitations period.” Boyce v.
Cassese, 941 So.2d 932, 946 n.2 (Ala. 2006); see
also Singer Asset Finance Co. v. Connecticut General Life
Ins. Co., 975 So.2d 375, 382 (Ala.Civ.App. 2007)
(“The statute of limitations begins to run from the
time the plaintiff's cause of action accrues, and there
is no ‘discovery rule' for negligence claims that
would toll the running of the statute of limitations from the
time the cause of action was ‘discovered' by the
plaintiff.”). The parties quarrel over none of these
propositions.
On its
face, Wyatt's Complaint reflects that the workplace
accident and injuries animating this litigation occurred on
June 10, 2015. Thus, Wyatt's claims against Quality Plus
accrued - and Alabama's two-year statute of limitations
began running - on that date. Yet Wyatt did not file an
Amended Complaint adding Quality Plus as a defendant until
November 10, 2017 (when he requested leave to amend) or
November 27, 2017 (when leave to amend was granted). Thus,
Wyatt first asserted his claims against Quality Plus some two
years and five months after they accrued, which would appear
to render them impermissibly tardy given the two-year
limitations period fixed by Alabama Code §
6-2-38(l).
Notwithstanding
these undisputed facts and legal principles, Wyatt maintains
that his claims against Quality Plus are timely under the
“relation back” doctrine. The applicable federal
rule provides, “An amendment to a pleading relates back
to the date of the original pleading when … the law
that provides the applicable statute of limitations allows
relation back.” Rule 15(c)(1)(A), Fed.R.Civ.P. In an
en banc decision, the Eleventh Circuit expressly
held that “Rule 15(c)(1) allows federal courts sitting
in diversity to apply relation-back rules of state law where,
as here, state law provides the statute of limitations for
the action.” Saxton v. ACF Industries, Inc.,
254 F.3d 959, 963 (11th Cir. 2001). As
Saxton explains, “Rule 15(c)(1) specifically
incorporates state principles of relation back into the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” Id. at 965
n.10. Courts in this circuit have adhered to the
Saxton holding by applying state-law relation-back
principles in diversity cases, even where relation back would
not otherwise be available under the federal
rules.[2]
In
accordance with binding precedent, then, this Court sitting
in diversity must apply Alabama's relation-back rules to
determine whether Wyatt's claims against Quality Plus
relate back to the date of the original Complaint and are
therefore timely. To that end, Wyatt invokes an Alabama rule
specifying that “[a]n amendment of a pleading relates
back to the date of the original pleading when …
relation back is permitted by principles applicable to
fictitious party practice pursuant to Rule 9(h).” Rule
15(c)(4), Ala.R.Civ.P. In turn, Alabama's Rule 9(h),
which has no analog in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,
states as follows: “When a party is ignorant of the
name of an opposing party and so alleges in the party's
pleading, the opposing party may be designated by any name,
and when that party's true name is discovered, the
process and all pleadings and proceedings in the action may
be amended by substituting the true name.” Rule 9(h),
Ala.R.Civ.P. Construing Alabama's Rule 15(c)(4) and Rule
9(h) together, the relation-back standard under Alabama law
(as recognized by both the Alabama Supreme Court and the
Eleventh Circuit in the diversity context) is as follows:
“Rules 9(h) and 15(c), Ala. R. Civ. P., allow a
plaintiff to avoid the bar of a statute of limitations by
fictitiously naming defendants for which actual parties can
later be substituted. Such a substitution is allowed to
relate back to the date of the original complaint if the
original complaint adequately described the fictitiously
named defendant and stated a claim against such a defendant.
In order for the substitution to relate back, the
plaintiff must show that he was ignorant of the true identity
of the defendant and that he used due diligence in attempting
to discover it.”
Saxton, 254 F.3d at 965 (quoting Jones v.
Resorcon, Inc., 604 So.2d 370, 372-73 (Ala. 1992))
(emphasis added); see also Ex parte VEL, LLC, 225
So.3d 591, 600 (Ala. 2016) (“under Rule 15(c)(4),
Kyser's amendments substituting [named defendants] for
fictitiously named defendants relate back to the date of the
original complaint only if she satisfied the requirements of
Rule 9(h)”). “Thus, under Alabama law, an
amendment substituting an actual defendant for a fictitious
defendant relates back when: (1) the original complaint
adequately described the fictitious defendant; (2) the
original complaint stated a claim against the fictitious
defendant; (3) the plaintiff was ignorant of the true
identity of the defendant; and (4) the plaintiff used due
diligence to discover the defendant's true
identity.” Saxton, 254 F.3d at 965 (citation
omitted); see also Mann v. Darden, 630 F.Supp.2d
1305, 1313-14 (M.D. Ala. 2009) (same).
Quality
Plus convincingly argues that the third requirement -
“the plaintiff was ignorant of the true identity of the
defendant” - is not satisfied here. In particular,
Quality Plus points to Wyatt's own deposition testimony,
in which he acknowledged that his work crew had
“already built several scaffolds in there for QPS,
” and explained that on the morning of the accident
Wyatt himself was instructed by his foreman to “go over
there and find QPS, find out what they want to do about a
scaffold, ” which Wyatt did. (Doc. 64, Exh. 1, at
194-95.) The QPS representative directed Wyatt to place
“a scaffold right here to do that work right
there.” (Id.)[3]This deposition excerpt
establishes Wyatt's prior knowledge (dating back to the
date of the accident itself) of Quality Plus's true name
and specific involvement in directing Wyatt and his crew as
to the placement of the scaffold that ultimately contacted
the valve and caused Wyatt's injuries. Thus, Quality
Plus's identity was known to plaintiff from the outset of
these proceedings. In fact, plaintiff's own testimony
unequivocally establishes that Wyatt always knew of Quality
Plus's role in operating, controlling or maintaining the
premises and scaffolding equipment at the time of the
accident. See VEL, 225 So.3d at 601 (“The
requirement that the plaintiff be ignorant of the identity of
the fictitiously named party has been generally explained as
follows: The correct test is whether the plaintiff knew, or
should have known, or was on notice, that the substituted
defendants were in fact the parties described
fictitiously.”) (citations and internal marks omitted);
Ex parte Lucas, 212 ...