Youngman v. Robert Bosch LLC

923 F. Supp. 2d 411, 84 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1603, 2013 WL 527269, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18364
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. New York
DecidedFebruary 11, 2013
DocketNo. 11-CV-2521 (SLT)(JO)
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 923 F. Supp. 2d 411 (Youngman v. Robert Bosch LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Youngman v. Robert Bosch LLC, 923 F. Supp. 2d 411, 84 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1603, 2013 WL 527269, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18364 (E.D.N.Y. 2013).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JAMES ORENSTEIN, United States Magistrate Judge.

Defendants Robert Bosch LLC, Robert Bosch Tool Corporation (collectively, “Bosch”), Lowe’s Home Centers, Inc., and Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (collectively, “Lowe’s”) seek leave to file an amended Answer that. asserts affirmative defenses under New Jersey law to the plaintiffs tort claims. See Docket Entry (“DE”) 39 (original motion); DE 42 (supplemental motion papers); Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). Plaintiff Catherine E. Youngman (‘Young-man”), in- her capacity as the Trustee of the bankruptcy estate of original plaintiff Dominik Charkiewicz (“Charkiewicz”), opposes the amendment: she claims that the court must apply the substantive law of [414]*414New York, and that the proposed amendment is therefore futile; in addition, she contends that the motion is untimely. See DE 40; DE 46. For the reasons set forth below, I grant the defendants leave to amend their Answer.1

I. Background

Charkiewicz filed this action in state court on February 25, 2011. He asserted tort claims under New York law based on injuries he claimed to have sustained as a result of using a table saw that the defendants manufactured and sold. See generally DE 1 at 7-27 (Verified Complaint) (the “Complaint”). In his Complaint, Charkiewicz stated that he “resides” in Brooklyn, New York; that he purchased the table saw at a Lowe’s store in Staten Island, New York on December 7, 2007; and that he sustained an injury while using the saw at an address in Bayonne, New Jersey on February 28, 2009. Id. ¶¶ 2, 45-47. On May 25, 2011, the defendants — all of them corporate entities incorporated, and with principal offices, in states other than New York — then invoked federal diversity jurisdiction to remove the case to this court. DE 1 at 1-3 (removal notice).

On June 1, 2012, the defendants filed the instant motion. They asserted that discovery in this case had revealed that the Bayonne site of the accident mentioned in the Complaint was in fact Charkiewicz’s residence at the time. Based on that fact and their analysis of applicable choice-of-law rules, the defendants argued that this case is governed by the law of New Jersey; as a result, they asked leave to file an amended complaint raising affirmative defenses under New Jersey law. DE 39. Youngman (who was substituted as plaintiff after being appointed as the Trustee for Charkiewicz’s bankruptcy estate, see DE 35; Fed.R.Civ.P. 25) opposes the motion on two grounds. First, she contends that the addition of affirmative defenses under New Jersey law would be futile because Charkiewicz was a New York resident at all material times for the purposes of determining controlling law, and that this action arises under the substantive law of New York. Second, she argues that the defendants waited too long to seek leave to amend their Answers. DE 40; DE 46.

II. Discussion

Once a party is no longer permitted to amend its pleading as a matter of course, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(1), that party may only amend its pleading upon the consent of its adversaries or by leave of the court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). Such leave shall be “freely give[n] ... when justice so requires.” Id. Although the determination of a motion for leave to amend is committed to the court’s sound discretion, see Dluhos v. Floating and Abandoned Vessel, Known as “New York”, 162 F.3d 63, 70 (2d [415]*415Cir.1998), a court should not deny leave to amend absent reasons such as (among others not pertinent here) “undue delay” or the “futility” of the proposed amendment. Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962). I address each proffered basis for denying leave to amend in turn below.

A. Undue Delay

Youngman contends that I should deny the motion as untimely. She notes that that the defendants have had all the information necessary to conduct a choice-of-law analysis and assert defenses under New Jersey law since the outset of this litigation. Moreover, Youngman asserts that she shaped her discovery strategy around an assumption that New York law would control, that she would have chosen a different discovery strategy had she known that New Jersey law applies, and that granting, the motion will therefore cause her prejudice. See DE 46 at 58-65.

I disagree that the defendants had sufficient notice, at the start of the case, of all the facts pertinent to the choice-of-law analysis. As discussed further below, while the place of the tort is an important factor, with respect to certain types of claims it is also important to know the domicile of each party. And while the Complaint did reveal the site of the tort, it obscured facts necessary to determine Charkiewicz’s domicile. Indeed, by using the present tense to allege that Charkiewicz “resides” in Brooklyn (Complaint ¶2) and then omitting any mention of the fact that the specified site of the accident (id. ¶ 47) was Charkiewicz’s residence at the time, the Complaint could reasonably have lulled the defendants into the false belief that it was not worth even considering whether Charkiewicz might be domiciled in any state other than New York.

To be sure, long before they moved to amend their Answer, the defendants received information in discovery that should have begun to dispel the confusion that the Complaint created. As a result, it is possible that the defendants could have filed their motion before discovery was completed. However, I do not conclude that the defendants delayed the motion in bad faith or that an earlier motion would have avoided all of the discovery inefficiencies that granting the motion now will create. In that regard, I note that “[d]e-lay alone, in the absence of bad faith or prejudice, is usually not a sufficient reason for denying a motion to amend.” Go v. Rockefeller Univ., 2008 WL 619039, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 6, 2008) (collecting cases).

A court may deny leave to amend that is the product of “inordinate delay,” but only if “no satisfactory explanation is offered for the delay, and the amendment would prejudice other parties.” Grace v. Rosenstock, 228 F.3d 40, 53-54 (2d Cir. 2000) (internal citations omitted). I do not think the delay here qualifies as inordinate, nor can I conclude, in light of the Complaint’s ambiguity concerning Charkiewicz’s residence, that the defendants have no satisfactory explanation for the delay. But even if I were to find both inordinate delay and no satisfactory explanation for it, I would not deny leave to amend on the basis of undue delay because the delay has not prejudiced Youngman. To the extent she has not sought information pertinent to litigating the proffered defenses under New Jersey law, I can and will permit the parties to exchange supplemental discovery.2

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923 F. Supp. 2d 411, 84 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1603, 2013 WL 527269, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18364, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/youngman-v-robert-bosch-llc-nyed-2013.