AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) - A Texas man will get his chance to sue the City of Tyler after a piece of lumber fell off one of its trucks and struck him in the head.
Lower courts ruled Leondra Leach had failed to provide Tyler with the appropriate notice under the city's charter, but the state Supreme Court overturned those decisions in a Sept. 16 opinion.
Tyler's charter requires notice of tort claims within 30 days of an incident. Leach's employer, Ameri-Tex, filed within seven, telling Leach it would be completing a claim form with the city for both itself and him.
Leach filed nothing, then, and the city claimed he had failed to provide notice. But the Supreme Court ruled the notice filed by Ameri-Tex was sufficient.
"The court of appeals found it significant that Ameri-Tex listed only itself in the space for 'Name of Claimant,'" the Supreme Court wrote.
"But just inches below that ine, a separate section of the form requested information about 'any injuries sustained.' In that space, Ameri-Tex said nothing about itself but only identified Leach's injury ('Head Contusion and neck straining') and supplied Leach's name, phone number and address."
The claim form also included Ameri-Tex's description of the incident, which mentioned Leach several times.
"Notice of this sort satisfies the statute's demand for basic information," the decision says.
It also didn't matter whether it the notice complied with Tyler code, because Leach filed his case within four months of the incident, the court decided, citing a 2010 ruling that said state law notice requirement can be satisfied when the lawsuit is filed within six months.
Leach was driving a truck for Ameri-Tex when an allegedly unsecured piece of wood hit his driver side mirror, then went through the truck window and struck Leach, his lawsuit alleges.