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An Indiana woman who won a multimillion-dollar verdict against a trucking company for a 2018 accident that left her quadriplegic cannot sue additional defendants for their alleged roles in the same accident, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in affirming the Monroe Circuit Court’s decision to dismiss her complaint.
In April 2018, appellant Kathryn Davidson was a passenger in a semitrailer driven by her boyfriend, Brandon Nicholson, who at the time was acting within the scope of his employment with J Trucking LLC.
While driving northbound on State Road 37 in Monroe County, Nicholson fell asleep, lost control and collided with an overpass bridge pier.
As a result of the collision, Davidson was ejected from the truck, sustained serious and permanent injuries, and is now quadriplegic.
Davidson sent a timely tort claim notice to the state alleging that the collision occurred in a construction zone within the Interstate 69 construction project and that the Indiana Department of Transportation’s negligence caused her injuries. Specifically, she claimed the department was at fault in planning and setting up the construction zone and for failing to place a barrier before the bridge pier to prevent or lessen any impact.
The state denied Davidson’s tort claim.
Davidson then filed a negligence action in Lake County against J Trucking and its owner, Sasa Jankovic, who was later dismissed from the case.
A 2019 bench trial resulted in judgment entered for Davidson against J Trucking for $3.24 million.
Davidson filed another negligence action in March 2020 — this time in Monroe County, where the accident occurred. The defendants — including the state, INDOT, I-69 Development Partners, DLZ Indiana, Aztec Engineering Group and Walsh Construction Company — all filed dispositive motions under either Trial Rule 12(B)(6) or 12(C).
Following a hearing on the motions, the court dismissed Davidson’s complaint with prejudice and denied her subsequent motion to correct error.
Davidson appealed, and the Court of Appeals of Indiana reversed, holding that neither collateral estoppel nor claim splitting barred her claims.
In comparing Davidson’s Lake County action to the Monroe County complaint, the COA found that collateral estoppel does not extend to matters that were not expressly adjudicated and can be inferred only by argument. It therefore found that the negligence and liability alleged by Davidson had not been previously litigated.
The defendants in the case then sought transfer, which the Indiana Supreme Court granted.
On appeal, Davidson argued the trial court erred in dismissing her action under doctrines of claim splitting and collateral estoppel, otherwise known as claim preclusion and issue preclusion. She also argued the trial court erred in refusing to treat the Rule 12 motions as motions for summary judgment, in dismissing her action with prejudice and in violating her due process rights under the 14th Amendment.
After hearing oral arguments in November 2022, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the claims Davidson asserted in Monroe County are barred by the doctrine of issue preclusion and that a plaintiff seeking tort damages from both government and nongovernment defendants must sue all such tortfeasors in one lawsuit.
The court thus affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the Monroe County action with prejudice and the denial of Davidson’s motions to correct error and to amend her complaint.
Justice Geoffrey Slaughter wrote the opinion for the court.
To Davidson’s argument regarding the doctrines of claim preclusion and issue preclusion, Slaughter wrote that claim preclusion does not apply in the case, but issue preclusion does, and the trial court was correct in dismissing her action on the latter ground.
“Here, the defendants argue that Davidson is barred from litigating the negligent cause of her injuries and damages in Monroe County because this issue was necessarily adjudicated in Lake County. We agree,” Slaughter wrote.
That’s because, according to Slaughter, the Lake County court determined conclusively that only J Trucking was at fault for Davidson’s injuries under the state’s Comparative Fault Act.
Next, Slaughter wrote that the trial court correctly declined to consider the Rule 12 motions as summary judgment motions because it considered only the pleadings and materials of which it took judicial notice: the filings in the Lake County action, a public records request and the tort claim notice.
“Thus, the trial court did not consider any extraneous materials that would require converting the Rule 12 motions to motions under Rule 56,” he wrote.
Finally, the high court affirmed the dismissal with prejudice, noting Rule 12(C) does not provide an automatic right to amend.
Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justices Derek Molter and Mark Massa concurred.
Justice Christopher Goff concurred in a separate opinion.
Goff wrote that he agreed with the court that Davidson is precluded from relitigating the allocation of fault in the case.
However, Goff said he believed the court was making new law in a vexingly complicated area: the interplay between Indiana’s common-law and comparative-fault negligence schemes.
“I would not lay down a hard and fast rule of procedure in mixed-theory cases involving both private and governmental defendants,” he wrote. “Rather, I would encourage all parties to make use of the flexibility provided by the Comparative Fault Act and to consider how the difficulty of litigating cases like this may be eased.”
The case is Kathryn Davidson v. State of Indiana, et al., 22S-CT-318.
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