 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Pearson v. Brooks12/5/2003
elley, the plaintiff was injured when he fell out of an aerial bucket lift owned by the City of Mobile.
The plaintiff and his wife sued the safety director for the City and several fictitiously named defendants. Subsequently, the plaintiffs learned that two other City employees were responsible for the testing and certification of the bucket lift, and they amended their complaint to substitute these individuals for the fictitiously named defendants.
The two employees argued that the plaintiffs' claims did not relate back to the original filing date of the complaint because, they said, the plaintiffs were not ignorant of their identities. This Court held that "the record devoid of any factual allegations which would indicate that the plaintiffs ... had knowledge of any facts concerning [the employees'] possible involvement in their personal injury ." 472 So. 2d at 986. Specifically, this Court stated that although the plaintiffs knew the two employees' names and their job titles, that information would not have placed the plaintiffs on notice that those two employees had anything to do with the safety of City equipment.
Pearson's factual situation, however, is not analogous to the situation in Dannelley. Pearson acknowledges that she was aware of Brooks's role in teaching employees how to properly clean the plant's machinery and of Black's role in instructing employees on safety procedures within the department. Therefore, Pearson knew more than Brooks's and Black's names and job titles; she had firsthand knowledge of their duties in the sanitation department and as to plant safety and how those duties would relate to her injury at the plant. Furthermore, Pearson's claim that she knew that the plant manager and the plant safety manager, whom she named as defendants, were involved in her injury, but that she did not know that the supervisors in her department had any role in her safety at the plant, in face of her deposition testimony about their duties involving training and safety, strains credulity.
Pearson's case is more analogous to Marsh v. Wenzel, 732 So. 2d 985 (Ala. 1998). The plaintiff in Marsh sued her surgeon, who had removed tissue from her breast but had failed to diagnose it as cancerous. After she deposed the pathologist who had also examined the tissue and had failed to diagnose the cancer, the plaintiff substituted the pathologist for one of the fictitiously named defendants. This same pathologist was listed in the plaintiff's medical records, to which she had access before she filed her lawsuit. This Court held that the plaintiff's claims were time-barred because she could not have reasonably been ignorant of the pathologist's identity and her claims against the pathologist, therefore, did not relate back. Dannelley and Marsh both quote Columbia Engineering International, Ltd. v. Espey, 429 So. 2d 955, 960 (Ala. 1983), which "re-emphasize ... that Rule 9(h) was not meant to excuse ignorance of the identity of a cause of action, but only ignorance of the name of the party against whom a cause of action is stated." Moreover, in Marsh, we interpreted Dannelley as standing only for the proposition that "one's ignorance of the existence of a relationship that could give rise to a duty is subsumed by the concept of 'ignorance of identity.'" 732 So. 2d at 989. Pearson's clear description of the personal training in cleaning the machines she received from Brooks and the safety instruction she received from Black establishes that she was aware of a special relationship that existed between her and her supervisors. Furthermore, Pearson's knowledge of Brooks's and Black's duties and authority counters any argument that Pearson did not know that the two owed her a
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Alabama Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|