Appellate Law

Undue Delay in Filing an Amended Complaint Not An Exception to the Affirm for Any Reason Rule

In Nettles v. White, released by the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals on April 4, 2008, the court determined that an appellate court may affirm on the basis of undue delay in filing an amended complaint even though that ground was not raised in the trial court.     

Nettles was a wheels case in which the defendant moved to dismiss the amended complaint, arguing that the claims it stated were time-barred and did not relate back.  The trial court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment, but did not explain its rationale. 

The defendant argued on appeal that even if the claims in the amended complaint related back to the date the original complaint was filed, the trial court correctly dismissed the claims because the plaintiff had unduly delayed the filing of them.  The Court of Civil Appeals agreed that there was undue delay in filing the amended complaint.  The defendant, however, had not raised undue delay as a grounds in support of his summary judgment motion below.  

In analyzing whether the failure to raise the undue delay was fatal to the defendant's argument on appeal, the court noted the long-standing rule that an appellate court will affirm the trial court on any valid legal ground presented by the record, regardless of whether that ground was considered, or even if it was rejected by the trial court. The court further noted the two exceptions to that rule: where due process requires some type of notice at the trial court level and where a summary judgment movant failed to assert that a non-movant failed to produce substantial evidence in support of an element of his claim.  The issue before the court, then, was whether or not undue delay in filing an amended complaint falls within one of the two exceptions to the general rule that an appellate court can affirm on any valid legal ground found in the record. 

The court concluded that it did not, relying on dicta in Prior v. Cancer Surgery of Mobile, P.C., 959 So.2d 1092, 1097 n. 2 (Ala. 2006).  In that case, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant, finding that the claims asserted did not relate back to the filing of the original complaint.  However, in a footnote, the supreme court noted that it could have affirmed the trial court's judgment on the ground that there had been an undue delay in the filing of the second amended complaint.  The court concluded that it could be inferred from the supreme court's omission of any mention of the defendant's having asserted undue delay as a ground in support of its summary judgment motion and from the supreme court's citing the rule that it will affirm a trial court's judgment if it is right for any reason that the defendant in Prior had not raised undue delay in the filing of the second amended complaint as a ground in support of its summary judgment motion.  Accordingly, the court concluded that it could affirm on the ground that there was undue delay in the filing of an amended complaint even though that ground was not presented in the trial court.      

Full post as published by Alabama Appellate Watch on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).