eNotes: Liability – July 2022 – Virginia

SIGNIFICANT CASE SUMMARIES

VA CASE SUMMARY

Edwards v. Omni Int’l Servs., Inc.
Virginia Supreme Court
No. 201329

Decided: May 26, 2022

Virginia Supreme Court limits refiling outside statute of limitations in misnomer cases to instances where proper defendants would not be prejudiced in defense.

Background

Carol Renee Edwards filed an action in Brunswick County Circuit Court alleging damages for personal injuries she received on June 25, 2017 when she fell due to a defective dock at a lake resort. The sole Defendant was “Company X, Inc., a Virginia Corporation, purportedly doing business as The Club Lake Gaston Resorts, a/k/a The Club, a/k/a Lake Gaston Resort.” Upon learning that Company X, Inc. was not the correct entity name, Edwards filed a nonsuit on February 10, 2020, and filed a new action, on March 6, 2020, against Omni International Services, Inc. in the same court, alleging the same set of facts,.

Omni filed a plea in bar, arguing that the action was beyond the applicable statute of limitations. Edwards contended that the error was a misnomer subject to correction. Omni proffered evidence at a hearing on the plea in bar that it had been the sole owner and operator of the Lake Gaston Resort since its inception, and that it was the record owner of the land on which it was situated. The proffer stated that the only relationship between Omni and Company X was that Omni served as registered agent for Company X and that Company X had done some marketing work for Omni in the past. The Circuit Court held that Omni and Company X were two separate and distinct entities, such that Edwards had filed outside the statute of limitations and her new complaint did not relate back to the date of the original filing against Company X.

Holding

The Court held that, as Omni was an entity “against whom the action could or was intended to be brought,” Edwards’s error was misnomer rather than misjoinder, as held by the Circuit Court. When a misnomer is corrected by nonsuiting and filing a new action, the Virginia cases Richmond v. Volk and Hampton v. Meyer control. In both Volk and Hampton, the plaintiffs sued the owners of the vehicles involved in collisions rather than the drivers. In those cases, the proper defendants were not prejudiced in defending on the merits because they had notice of the accidents. Here, there is no credible evidence that Omni had prior notice of Plaintiff’s suit, such that it would be prejudiced in defending the case on the merits. The Court limited Volk and Hampton to apply only to cases in which defendant had notice of the factual basis of plaintiff’s claims. Justices Kelsey and Chafin concurred in the result, but described Edwards’s error as misjoinder because she named the wrong party. This decision adds to a line of cases which confuse the boundaries between misnomer and misjoinder in Virginia.

Questions about this case can be directed to Mackenzie Payne at (571) 470-1906 or mpayne@tthlaw.com.