Corbett v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc.

166 So. 2d 196
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedJune 9, 1964
DocketE-279
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 166 So. 2d 196 (Corbett v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Corbett v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 166 So. 2d 196 (Fla. Ct. App. 1964).

Opinion

166 So.2d 196 (1964)

Edward M. CORBETT and Myrtice Corbett, his wife, and Willie Green and Iris Green, his wife, and Airport Inn, Inc., a corporation, Appellants,
v.
EASTERN AIR LINES, INC., a corporation, Northeast Air Lines, Inc., a corporation, United Air Lines, Inc., a corporation, and Delta Air Lines, Inc., a corporation, Appellees.

No. E-279.

District Court of Appeal of Florida. First District.

June 9, 1964.
Rehearing Denied August 5, 1964.

*197 Carlton L. Welch, Jacksonville, for appellants.

Bedell, Bedell & Dittmar, Jacksonville, for appellees.

CARROLL, DONALD K., Judge.

The plaintiffs in an action for damages against four airlines have appealed from a final order entered by the Circuit Court for Duval County dismissing with prejudice their complaint and cause.

The ultimate and principal question before us for determination in this appeal is whether the plaintiffs, who own and operate an airport restaurant on land adjoining a municipal airport, have sufficiently alleged in their initial and proposed amended complaints a cause of action against four commercial airlines whose jet aircraft land, warm up, and commence their take-off on *198 a runway near the said restaurant. A subsidiary question is whether the court erred in denying the plaintiffs' motion to file their amended complaint.

These questions arose out of a complex of pleadings and orders in three separate but related actions filed by the plaintiffs in the said Circuit Court.

The essential background facts concerning these three actions may be summarized as follows:

On July 16, 1962, the plaintiffs filed their first action (Case No. 62-1103-L, according to the numbering system used in the said Circuit Court) — an action for damages against the City of Jacksonville, as the owner and operator of the airport (known as the Imeson Airport), and against three of the four airlines (later adding the fourth). To this complaint the defendants duly filed motions to dismiss. At a hearing on these motions the court granted the plaintiffs' oral motion for leave to file an amended complaint, which they filed on November 1, 1962.

The amended complaint (in Case No. 62-1103-L) named the city and the four airlines as the defendants. The defendants filed motions to dismiss the amended complaint, and, by an order entered on November 21, 1962, the court granted the said motions but also granted to the plaintiffs leave to file a second amended complaint against the said city only. The court states therein that an effect of its order was to eliminate the defendant airlines as parties defendant in the cause, but "without prejudice to the filing by any plaintiff of another suit against either or all of those defendants based on some concept other than the theory of the taking of property without payment of compensation therefor." The court then ordered that the caption of the cause be amended by deleting therefrom the names of all parties defendant except the City of Jacksonville.

Pursuant to the said order (in Case No. 62-1103-L), the plaintiffs on January 17, 1963, filed a second amended complaint against the city only. The city's motion to dismiss the said complaint was denied by an order entered on March 1, 1963. The city then filed its answer to the said complaint and the cause was set for a jury trial on June 17, 1963. Four days before this trial date, however, the plaintiffs and the defendant city filed a stipulation, executed by their attorneys, dismissing the cause without prejudice, pursuant to Rule 1.35 of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, 30 F.S.A. On the same day the court entered an order dismissing the cause upon the basis of the said stipulation.

In the meantime, on May 3, 1963, the plaintiffs filed in the said Circuit Court two new actions. The first was a suit in equity (Case No. 63-2246-E) against the City of Jacksonville only, seeking injunctive relief and damages for permitting certain operations by jet aircraft at the airport.

The second action (Case No. 63-822-L) which the plaintiffs filed on May 3, 1963, was an action at law for damages against the four airlines only. This is the action which is directly involved in the present appeal before this court. To the plaintiffs' complaint the four defendant airlines filed their motions to dismiss on the ground that the complaint fails to state a cause of action against the defendants or any of them, and on the further ground that the plaintiffs' claim as set forth therein is in substance identical to that previously made by the same plaintiffs against the same defendants in Case No. 62-1103-L, which was dismissed by the court as against the airlines for failure to state a cause of action against them.

With the above background in mind in regard to the said three actions, the ruling of the Circuit Court in the final order appealed from herein, can be readily understood. That order provides as follows:

"1. The plaintiffs' motion (filed June 20, 1963) for leave to file herein an amended complaint joining as a *199 party defendant City of Jacksonville, Florida, a municipal corporation, is denied. [No logical reason is seen why this suit, in the process of being dismissed for failure of the complaint and amended complaint to state a cause of action against the defendant airlines, should be given new life by the addition of a defendant which would then become the sole defendant, when the plaintiffs only a few days ago, shortly before the scheduled jury trial, dismissed their case No. 62-1103-L against the same City of Jacksonville based on a substantially similar cause of action, and when the plaintiffs now have pending against the same City of Jacksonville their case No. 63-2246-E, filed the same day this case No. 63-822-L was filed, based on a substantially similar purported cause of action.]
"2. The motions (filed May 24 and June 24, 1963) of the defendants Eastern Air Lines, Inc., Northeast Air Lines, Inc., United Air Lines, Inc., and Delta Air Lines, Inc., to dismiss the initial complaint and the amended complaint are granted. Those complaints, and this case, are dismissed with prejudice. [An effect of this is to bar any further action by the plaintiffs against those defendants on any substantially similar cause of action, the plaintiffs having failed in four attempts in case No. 62-1103-L and this case to state a cause of action against those defendants.]"

In their assignments of error filed in this appeal the appellants-plaintiffs assert that the Circuit Court erred: in dismissing the complaint as to the four defendant airlines; in denying the plaintiffs' motion for leave to file the amended complaint, joining as an additional party defendant the City of Jacksonville; in ruling that the amended complaint fails to show a cause of action as to each of the defendants named in the said amended complaint; and in entering the said order "in such form as to amount to a Summary Dismissal of the cause."

Nevertheless, looking at the heart of this appeal, we conceive that the real issues before us for determination are whether the allegations in the plaintiffs' initial complaint, and their proposed amended complaint in the present case (Case No. 63-822-L) are sufficient to state a cause of action against the four defendant airlines, and whether the court abused its discretion in refusing to allow the plaintiffs to file their amended complaint bringing in the City of Jacksonville as an additional party defendant.

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166 So. 2d 196, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/corbett-v-eastern-air-lines-inc-fladistctapp-1964.