Wiggins v. State Through Dept. of Transp. and Development

712 So. 2d 1006, 1998 WL 248231
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 15, 1998
DocketCA 97 0432
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 712 So. 2d 1006 (Wiggins v. State Through Dept. of Transp. and Development) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wiggins v. State Through Dept. of Transp. and Development, 712 So. 2d 1006, 1998 WL 248231 (La. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinion

712 So.2d 1006 (1998)

Alma Gilton WIGGINS, Individually and on behalf of her minor child, Duncan Wiggins
v.
STATE of Louisiana, through the DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND DEVELOPMENT.

No. CA 97 0432.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, First Circuit.

May 15, 1998.

*1007 Dorothy Jackson, Baton Rouge, for Defendant/Appellant DOTD.

Walter Dumas, Baton Rouge, for Plaintiff/Appellee Alma Gilton Wiggins.

Denis Gaubert, III Thibodaux, for Third Party Defendants and Third Party Plaintiff Clayton Gros and La. Farm Bureau Ins. Co.

Before FOIL, WHIPPLE and KUHN, JJ.

WHIPPLE, Judge.

Defendant, the State, through the Department of Transportation and Development, appeals the trial court's judgment maintaining plaintiff's peremptory exception of prescription and denying defendant's peremptory exception of no right of action. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment insofar as it denied defendant's peremptory exception of no right of action and reverse the portion of the judgment maintaining the peremptory exception of prescription.

*1008 FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

This suit arises from an accident which occurred on July 30, 1993, when Clayton C. Gros, while driving his truck on Highway 400 in Assumption Parish, struck a pedestrian, Duncan Wiggins. Duncan Wiggins is the minor son of Alma Gilton Wiggins and Wilfred W. Wiggins. On the same day the accident occurred, Alma and Wilfred physically separated.

On December 20, 1993, Alma filed a petition for divorce, alleging that she and Wilfred had been separated since July 30, 1993. Approximately one year after they separated, on July 18, 1994, the trial judge granted the divorce; however, he did not sign the judgment until August 3, 1994. Six days earlier, on July 28, 1994, Alma filed suit individually and on behalf of Duncan against the DOTD.[1] Thus, at the time the suit was filed, she and Wilfred were still married.

On August 8, 1994, the DOTD was served with the petition, which it answered on October 7, 1994. Over a year later, on December 22, 1995, the DOTD filed a pleading styled "RECONVENTIONAL DEMAND AND THIRD-PARTY DEMAND" naming Alma as a defendant-in-reconvention, seeking indemnity and contribution from Alma for her negligence in failing to properly supervise her child and in allowing him to play near the highway, which it alleged had contributed to Duncan's accident.[2]

Citing LSA-C.C.P. art. 1067, on January 3, 1996, plaintiff filed a peremptory exception of prescription, contending that the DOTD had failed to file its reconventional demand within the proper time period, as more than ninety days had elapsed since the August 8, 1994 service of the petition on the DOTD. Thus, plaintiff contended that the DOTD's claim against Alma was prescribed.

On February 16, 1996, (after filing its original answer, and the answer and reconventional demand) the DOTD filed what it titled a peremptory exception of no right of action, contending that Alma was not the proper party plaintiff to represent the minor, Duncan. The trial court maintained defendant's exception, but granted plaintiff 15 days to amend her petition in order to "cure" the defect if possible. Plaintiff then amended her petition to read, wherever appropriate, "Alma Gilton Wiggins, Individually and As Natural Tutrix of Her Minor Child, Duncan Wiggins."

The DOTD then refiled and reurged its peremptory exception of no right of action, and on May 20, 1996, the trial court conducted a hearing on both the DOTD's exception of no right of action and plaintiff's exception of prescription. After reconsidering its earlier ruling on the DOTD's exception, the trial court denied the DOTD's exception and maintained plaintiff's exception. The DOTD applied for supervisory writs, which this court denied, remanding the case to the trial court with instructions to grant the DOTD an appeal herein.

Thus, the DOTD now appeals, assigning as error: (1) the trial court's denial of the DOTD's peremptory exception of no right of action and (2) the trial court's grant of plaintiff's peremptory exception of prescription.

DILATORY EXCEPTION OF LACK OF PROCEDURAL CAPACITY

In the exceptions, styled as "exception[s] of no right of action," the DOTD asserted that Alma was not the proper party to bring action on Duncan's behalf, as she had not been judicially appointed tutrix of her minor son, and she and Wilfred were married at the time of Duncan's accident, making Wilfred the proper party to bring the suit.[3] At the outset, we note that the nature of a pleading must be determined by its substance, not by its caption. Bonaventure v. Pourciau, 577 So.2d 742, 746 (La.App. 1st Cir.1991).

*1009 With respect to the exceptions of no right of action filed herein, it is clear that the law recognizes the right of the mother to institute suit and assert the claim on behalf of her child under certain circumstances, where the mother has complied with the procedural formalities which allow her to qualify as the child's representative. In the exceptions, the DOTD attacks the procedural capacity of the mother to assert the claim, by filing suit in the minor's behalf while still married to the child's father. Accordingly, as the trial court correctly determined, although couched as "no right" exceptions, the DOTD was challenging the procedural capacity of Alma, as opposed to Wilfred, to bring suit on Duncan's behalf. Thus, the court correctly found that the actual exception the DOTD was raising was that of lack of procedural capacity.

Lack of procedural capacity is a dilatory exception which must be pleaded prior to or in the answer or it is waived. LSA-C.C.P. art. 926 A(6); LSA-C.C.P. art. 928; Shatoska v. Whiddon, 468 So.2d 1314, 1318 (La.App. 1st Cir.), writ denied 472 So.2d 35 (La.1985).[4] By failing to plead it prior to or in the answer, the DOTD waived the dilatory exception of lack of procedural capacity and the objection "could not be resurrected by camouflaging it" as a peremptory exception of no right of action. See Barrie v. V.P. Exterminators, Inc., 625 So.2d 1007, 1018 (La.1993). Thus, the trial court properly denied the DOTD's exceptions herein of lack of procedural capacity, incorrectly styled as no right of action exceptions.[5]

PEREMPTORY EXCEPTION OF PRESCRIPTION

A defendant must assert, in the form of a reconventional demand, all causes of action that he has against the plaintiff which arise out of the transaction or occurrence which is the subject matter of the principal action. LSA-C.C.P. art. 1061. If a defendant fails to assert his claim in reconvention, he loses it, as res judicata will bar relitigation of issues common to both causes of action. LSA-C.C.P. art. 1061, Comments—1990 (b). A defendant commences his reconventional demand by petition or by incorporating it into his answer to the principal demand. LSA-C.C.P. art. 1032. If a defendant does not include his reconventional demand in his answer, he may still assert it by petition if it was not barred at the time the main demand was filed and is filed within ninety days of date of service of the main demand. LSA-C.C.P. art. 1067. In determining whether the DOTD's pleadings were untimely, we must again focus on the substance of the demand and not the title of the pleading.

DEFENSES TO ALMA'S INDIVIDUAL CLAIM

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
712 So. 2d 1006, 1998 WL 248231, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wiggins-v-state-through-dept-of-transp-and-development-lactapp-1998.