Cardio-Medical Associates, Ltd. v. Crozer-Chester Medical Center

95 F.R.D. 194, 34 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 1101, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14539
District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania·Decided August 26, 1982·No. Civ. A. No. 81-3050·Published·Cited by 10 cases

Opinion

OPINION

JOSEPH S. LORD, III, Senior District Judge.

Plaintiffs filed their original complaint in this complicated denial of hospital staff privileges case on July 30, 1981. On March 15,1982, pursuant to defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, I dismissed Count II of plaintiffs’ original complaint with prejudice and dismissed Count I of plaintiffs’ original complaint without prejudice, granting leave for plaintiffs to file an amended complaint within sixty days. 536 F.Supp. 1065. On May 13, 1982, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint stating more specifically the identical claims alleged in Count I of the original complaint.

In their amended complaint, for the first time in these proceedings, plaintiff demanded a jury trial on all issues raised in their amended pleading. All defendants have now moved to strike plaintiffs’ jury trial demand on the ground that plaintiffs’ demand is untimely. For the reasons that ■appear more fully below, I grant defendants’ motion and order plaintiffs’ demand for trial by jury be stricken.1

Rule 38(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides as follows:

[196] (b) Demand. Any party may demand a trial by jury of any issue triable of right by a jury by serving upon the other parties a demand therefore in writing at any time after the commencement of the action and not later than 10 days after the service of the last pleading directed to such issue. Such demand may be endorsed upon a pleading of the party.

Subsection (d) of rule 38 further provides as follows:

(d) Waiver. The failure of a party to serve a demand as required by this rule and to file it as required by Rule 5(d) constitutes a waiver by him of trial by jury....

Under rule 38, in a case in which the only pleadings are the complaint and .answer, any demand for jury trial must be served not later than ten days after service of the answer. See 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2320, at 92 (1981). Because plaintiffs in this case sued a number of defendants, two answers were filed to plaintiffs’ original complaint: one on August 24, 1981 and one on October 29, 1981. Under rule 38, plaintiffs were therefore required to serve their demand for jury trial no later than November 11, 1982.2 Plaintiffs did not, however, serve their demand for a jury trial until May 13, 1982, the date on which they filed their amended complaint. Defendants argue that this demand is untimely and therefore ineffective,

It is well settled that, if the original pleadings in an action effectively waive trial by jury under rules 38(b) and (d), the right to trial by jury of all matters contained in those pleadings cannot be revived by subsequent amendment of the original pleadings. See, e.g., Walton v. Eaton Corp., 563 F.2d 66, 71 (3d Cir. 1977) (en banc); Crawford v. Dominic, 85 F.R.D. 33 (E.D.Pa. 1979); 5 J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice 138.39(2), at 38-353 (1982). The only exception to this general rule that amendment of a pleading does not revive a previously waived right to demand a jury trial is in a case in which the amended pleading raises new issues not raised by the original pleading. See 5 J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice 138.39(2), at 38-354 (1981). That exception, however, is concededly inapplicable in the instant case.3

Plaintiffs have responded to defendants’ motion to strike plaintiffs’ demand for a jury trial with an innovative argument. Plaintiffs argue that, because this court dismissed plaintiffs’ entire complaint on March 15, 1982, there was no pending case before this court. As a result, plaintiffs seek to distinguish all existing rule 38 precedents as dealing solely with revival of a jury trial right upon amendment of a pending complaint. In support of this proposition, plaintiffs cite the well-settled rule that “dismissal without prejudice operates to leave the parties as if no action had been brought at all.” Moore v. St. Louis Music Supply Co., Inc., 539 F.2d 1191, 1194 (8th Cir. 1976). Accord, Le Compte v. Mr. Chip, Inc., 528 F.2d 601, 603 (5th Cir. 1976); Bomer v. Ribicoff, 304 F.2d 427, 428 (6th Cir. 1962); White v. City of Suffolk, 460 F.Supp. 516, 521 (E.D.Va.1978); Selas Corp. of America v. Wilshire Oil Company of Texas, 57 F.R.D. 3, 6 (E.D.Pa.1972). See generally 5 J. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 41.05[2] (1982). Thus, plaintiffs argue that this court’s March 15, 1982 involuntary dismissal of plaintiffs’ entire original complaint operated to erase plaintiffs’ waiver of their right to a jury trial on their original complaint.

Although innovative, I decline to accept plaintiffs’ argument. As an introductory [197] matter, I note that this entire dispute turns on the potential distinctions for rule 38 purposes between two related procedures: the involuntary dismissal without prejudice of plaintiffs’ complaint coupled with a simultaneous grant of leave to amend versus the denial of defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings without prejudice coupled with a simultaneous granting to plaintiffs of leave to amend the complaint. My review of the case law disclosed no inclination by appellate courts to distinguish between these two concepts. See Hitt v. City of Pasadena, 561 F.2d 606, 608-09 (5th Cir. 1977); Tuley v. Heyd, 482 F.2d 590, 594-95 (5th Cir. 1973). See also Borelli v. City of Reading, 532 F.2d 950, 951 (3d Cir. 1976) (“we suggest that district judges expressly state, where appropriate, that the plaintiff has leave to amend within a specified period of time”). Cf. Pinkard v. Pullman-Standard, 678 F.2d 1211, 1218 (5th Cir. 1982) (“to distinguish such an action, once dismissed and then renewed, from an action where the defect is cured while the action remains pending is to distinguish between a glass half full and a glass half empty”).4

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Cardio-Medical Associates, Ltd. v. Crozer-Chester Medical Center, 95 F.R.D. 194, 34 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 1101, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14539 (E.D. Pa. 1982).

95 F.R.D. 194 (Cardio-Medical Associates, Ltd. v. Crozer-Chester Medical Center) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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