CRONCE v. TRISTATE EROSION CONTROL COMPANY INC. et al
Filing
9
MEMORANDUM OPINION. Signed by Chief Judge Jerome B. Simandle on 12/3/2014. (dmr)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
JAMES CRONCE,
HONORABLE JEROME B. SIMANDLE
Plaintiff,
Civil Action
No. 14-3397 (JBS/KMW)
v.
TRISTATE EROSION CONTROL
COMPANY INC., et al,
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Defendants.
SIMANDLE, Chief Judge:
In this products liability action, Defendant Mack Trucks,
Inc. (hereinafter, “Defendant”) moves for summary judgment on
the basis that the applicable statute of limitation bars
Plaintiff’s claims.
[Docket Item 3.]
On November 3, 2014, the
Court converted the motion to one for summary judgment, given
the parties’ reliance upon matters extraneous to the pleading.
[Docket Items 7 & 8.]
The narrow issue presented by the converted, pending motion
is whether Plaintiff James Cronce (hereinafter, “Plaintiff”)
filed his initial state court Complaint within the applicable
two-year limitation period.1
In that regard, the parties do not
genuinely dispute that Plaintiff submitted his initial Complaint
1
The parties do not dispute that a two-year limitation period
governs Plaintiff’s complaint. Nor do the parties dispute that
such limitations period required Plaintiff to file his Complaint
by no later than April 13, 2014.
to the Superior Court of New Jersey on April 11, 2014.
Nor do
the parties genuinely dispute that the Superior Court of New
Jersey initially rejected Plaintiff’s Complaint for failure to
include a civil case information statement, as required by New
Jersey Court Rule 4:5-1.
Rather, the parties’ dispute whether
Plaintiff’s curative measure, namely, the subsequent submission
of a civil case information statement on April 17, 2014,
sufficed to render Plaintiff’s Complaint timely filed as of
April 11, 2014.
For the reasons that follow, the Court finds
Plaintiff’s Complaint timely.
accordingly, be denied.
1.
Defendant’s motion will,
The Court finds as follows:
In his three-page Complaint, Plaintiff, a former “Mack
R Series heavy-duty” truck driver for Tristate Erosion Control
Company, Inc. (hereinafter, “Tristate”), alleges that, on April
13, 2012, a defective “step/fuel tank” broke, causing him to
fall. (Compl. at ¶ 4.) Plaintiff, accordingly, seeks monetary
damages for the injuries sustained as result of Defendant’s
allegedly negligent and defective design, assemblage, and/or
repair of the “step/fuel tank.” (See generally id.)
2.
Defendant removed this action on May 29, 2014.
[Docket Item 1.]
On June 5, 2014, Defendant moved to dismiss on
the ground that Plaintiff failed to timely file his Complaint.
[Docket Item 3.]
In so arguing, Defendant pointed to the
version of Plaintiff’s Complaint appended to its motion, which
2
reflected that the Superior Court of New Jersey “‘Received’” and
“‘Filed’” Plaintiff’s Complaint on April 17, 2014, four days
after the expiration of the limitation period.
3; see also Ex. A. to Def.’s Br.)
(Def.’s Br. at
In addition, Defendant relied
upon screenshots of the New Jersey Courts Public Access website,
which similarly identified an April 17, 2014 filing date for
Plaintiff’s Complaint.
3.
(Ex. B. to Def.’s Br.)
Plaintiff conceded in opposition that an initial
submission defect, namely, the absence of a civil case
information statement, resulted in a technical rejection of
Plaintiff’s Complaint by the state court on April 11, 2014.
Notwithstanding the initial defect, Plaintiff argued that New
Jersey Court Rule 1:5-6(c)(1)(B) (hereinafter, “Rule 1:5-6”)
enabled him to preserve his initial April 11, 2014 submission
date through prompt correction of such defect. (Id. at 5, 6).
Plaintiff therefore asserted that the curative effect of Rule
1:5-6(c)(1)(B) rendered his Complaint timely filed as of April
11, 2014. (Id.)
In so asserting, Plaintiff relied upon a copy
of the Complaint stamped “Received” on April 11, 2014 (Ex. A to
Pl.’s Br.); a letter from New Jersey Civil Case Management
directing Plaintiff to submit a completed case information
statement (Ex. B to Pl.’s Br.); a case information statement
stamped “Filed” by the Superior Court on April 17, 2014 (Ex. C
to Pl.’s Br.); and a screenshot of the New Jersey Courts Public
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Access website, which reflected an April 11, 2014 filing date
for Plaintiff’s Complaint. (Ex. D to Pl.’s Br.)
4.
On November 3, 2014, the Court converted the motion to
dismiss into one for summary judgment, in light of the parties’
conflicting proffer.
[Docket Items 7 & 8.]
In addition, the
Court provided the parties fourteen (14) days “to adduce any
additional evidence concerning the statute of limitations issue
by submitting evidence” in the format required by Federal Rule
of Civil Procedure 56.
no such submissions.
[Docket Item 7 at 7.]
The parties filed
The present submissions, however, suffice
to enable the Court to resolve the dispute concerning the
timeliness of Plaintiff’s Complaint.
Indeed, as stated below,
the Court’s disposition of the pending motion hinges on the
Court’s own review of a matter of public record.
Moreover, the
Court principally converted the pending motion, as required by
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(d), in order to consider the
conflicting extraneous materials appended to the parties’
submissions, and to provide the parties an opportunity to
present all materials germane to the timeliness inquiry.
Consequently, despite the parties’ declination, the Court turns
to the converted motion.
5.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a) generally
provides that the “court shall grant summary judgment if the
movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material
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fact” such that the movant is “entitled to judgment as a matter
of law.” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). In evaluating a motion for summary
judgment, the Court must view the evidence in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party, and must provide that party
the benefit of all reasonable inferences.
Scott v. Harris, 550
U.S. 372, 378 (2007); Halsey v. Pfeiffer, 750 F.3d 273, 287 (3d
Cir. 2014).
6.
As stated above, Defendant does not genuinely dispute
that Plaintiff submitted his initial Complaint on April 11,
2014. (See generally Def.’s Reply.) Rather, Defendant asserts
that no sufficient basis exists to conclude that “the Complaint
filed on April 17, 2014 in the Superior Court of New Jersey must
be considered timely filed on April 11, 2014[,]” given the
absence of a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure that permits such
retroactive filing and Plaintiff’s purported delay in curing the
“procedural defects.”
(Id. at 5.)
In so arguing, however,
Defendant ignores the unequivocal information presently set
forth by the New Jersey Judiciary on its Automated Case
Management System (hereinafter, the “ACMS”).
7.
The ACMS, like its federal counterpart, Public Access
to Court Electronic Records, enables the public to electronically
access information concerning New Jersey state court filings.
The information provided by the ACMS System, accordingly,
constitutes a public record of which the Court takes judicial
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notice.
See FED. R. EVID. 201; see also In re Cramer, No. 11-1211,
2011 WL 2112518, *5 (D.N.J. May 26, 2011) (taking notice of the
case information contained on the ACMS).
The ACMS system
reflects, without question, that the Superior Court of New Jersey
deemed Plaintiff’s Complaint filed on April 11, 2014.
See ACMS,
Docket No. L-1524-14, available at
http://njcourts.judiciary.state.nj.us/web15z/ACMSPA/.
Consequently, despite Defendant’s assertions concerning the
inefficacy of Plaintiff’s curative efforts and the
inapplicability of Rule 1:5-6 to this now federal court action,2
2
Nor does the Court find Saddle River Valley Bank v. Garsia, No.
10-1911, 2010 WL 4929268 (D.N.J. Nov. 30, 2010), the sole case
relied upon by Defendant for this premise, “fairly analogous” to
the facts of this litigation. (Def.’s Reply at 3.) Rather,
Saddle River has facts plainly distinguishable from this action.
Specifically, in Saddle River, the appellant sought to file a
complaint objecting to the appellee’s discharge of a debt owed
to the appellant. Id. at *1. Federal Rule of Bankruptcy
Procedure 4007(c) required any such complaints to be filed by no
later than August 18, 2009. Id. The appellant, accordingly,
finalized its complaint on August 17, 2009, and engaged the New
Jersey Lawyers Service (hereinafter, “NJLS”) to hand deliver the
pleading to the bankruptcy court on the same day. Id. Despite
the appellant’s accurate address label, the NJLS inexplicably
filed the appellant’s complaint with the state court, rather
than the federal bankruptcy court. Id. However, neither the
NJLS nor the state court’s clerk’s office alerted the appellant
of the misfiling or of any other delivery problems. Id.
Rather, upon discovering the misfiling, the state court
forwarded the complaint directly to the bankruptcy court, “where
it was received and filed on August 21, 2009, three days after
the deadline.” Id. The bankruptcy court subsequently dismissed
the appellant’s complaint as time barred. Id. In so finding,
the bankruptcy court rejected the appellant’s argument that Rule
1:5-6 provided a basis to find the appellant’s complaint timely,
because the procedural rules of the state court, an “entirely
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the New Jersey Judiciary, as reflected in the ACMS, clearly found
such subsequent efforts sufficient to cure any initial, technical
defects in Plaintiff’s submission.
8.
In that regard, the Court recognizes that the May 28,
2014 ACMS screenshots appended to Defendant’s brief indicate that
Plaintiff filed his state court Complaint on April 17, 2014.
(See Ex. B to Def.’s Br.)
The discrepancy, however, does not
alter the disposition of the pending motion, given the case
information presently reflected on the ACMS.
Moreover, counsel
for Plaintiff certifies that an employee of the state court
advised counsel, on June 12, 2014, that the case information
would be amended to “accurately reflect[]” the April 11, 2014
filing date.3
(Gentes Cert., ¶¶ 10-11.)
Counsel for Plaintiff
therefore acknowledges that the state court modified the ACMS
after Defendant’s removal.
(See id.)
The state court’s
subsequent modification of this date, however, as reflected in
the parties’ contradicting ACMS screenshots, does not alter the
separate” entity, had no application to a filing the appellant
solely intended for federal court. Id. at *5. No similar
misfiling occurred in this instance. Rather, Plaintiff
initially filed this action, with intention, in the Superior
Court of New Jersey. [Docket Item 1.] The New Jersey
procedural rules, as stated below, therefore have clear
application to the determination of the date on which Plaintiff
initially filed this action in state court.
3
Even if such statement constitutes otherwise inadmissible
hearsay, the ACMS provides an independent, and indisputably
authentic, confirmation of such assertion. See ACMS, Docket No.
L-1524-14, available at
http://njcourts.judiciary.state.nj.us/web15z/ACMSPA/.
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Court’s conclusion.
(Compare Ex. B to Def.’s Br. (reflecting an
April 17, 2011 filing date as of May 28, 2014), with Ex. D to
Pl.’s Opp’n (reflecting an April 11, 2011 filing date).)
Rather,
the state court’s construction of the date on which Plaintiff
initially filed his Complaint remains dispositive, regardless of
the date on which the state court made such correction, because
state law “‘controls the pre-removal aspects’” of this action.
Giehl v. Terex Utils., No. 13-083, 2013 WL 618775, at *3 (M.D.
Pa. Feb. 19, 2013) (citations omitted).
9.
In sum, the Court finds Plaintiff’s initial state court
Complaint timely filed as of April 11, 2014.
Defendant’s motion
will therefore be denied.
10.
An accompanying Order will be entered.
December 3, 2014
Date
s/ Jerome B. Simandle
JEROME B. SIMANDLE
Chief U.S. District Judge
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