JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - A man who lost two fingers as a child when they were caught in a bicycle chain can proceed with his lawsuit against a school district even though it was filed a decade later, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled, finding the district waived its statute-of-limitations argument by failing to raise it soon enough.
Three justices expressed some level of dissatisfaction with the decision, although they agreed precedent demanded it.
Kelvin Pruitt was a special needs student who was injured in 2008 after he was ordered off the school bus and accepted a ride home from a friend. He originally sued the Jackson School District and two officials in 2009, but withdrew the complaint in 2018 due to problems with service, sued and dismissed the case again in 2018 and finally sued on Jan. 16, 2020.
The school district responded on Feb. 20, 2020, citing the Mississippi Tort Claims Act, which includes a one-year statute of limitations that can be tolled for minors until they turn 21. The Jackson district filed a motion to dismiss in June 2020, arguing the statute of limitations had expired in 2010 because Pruitt first sued in 2009. A trial court agreed and dismissed his case.
The Mississippi Supreme Court, in an Oct. 20 decision, reversed the dismissal and remanded the case for trial. The plaintiffs argued the defendants had waived the statute of limitations defense by failing to raise it in their initial response on Feb. 20, 2020. By their calculation, the statute of limitations didn’t expire until February 2021.
The Mississippi Supreme Court agreed, saying the defendants had to declare they would claim the statute of limitations in their initial response to the lawsuit.
“Broadly referencing an entire chapter of statutory law …is far short of sufficient to announce an intention to prove that the statute of limitations bars the action,” the court ruled. “`Magic words’ are not required to invoke a defense. But our law places the burden on the defendants to identify and give fair notice of their intended defenses.”
Justice Josiah Coleman, joined by Justice T. Kenneth Griffis, agreed with the result but only because the Mississippi Supreme Court had in 2021 upheld a precedent allowing trial judges to reject affirmative defenses if they aren’t raised immediately. Justice Coleman said he supported a dissenting justice’s opinion that the precedent applied only to arbitration clauses and other defenses could be raised at trial.
The high court’s interpretation of the law, he wrote, “has created irreconcilable tension between our caselaw and our rules of procedure.”