HARRISBURG – Three judges from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled that an Uber driver properly received summary judgment, when he and his employer were sued by a SEPTA driver injured in an October 2016 accident that the individual defendant allegedly caused.
Superior Court judges John T. Bender, Judith Ference Olson and Eugene B. Strassburger III (posthumously) ruled on July 8 to uphold the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas’s decision, in Erica’s action against Uber Technologies, Inc., Gegen, LLC and Cosmos Manu.
Olson authored the Court’s opinion in this matter.
“Appellant has worked at Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) for four years as a bus operator. At the time of the accident, she worked full-time and rotated between day and night shifts. On Oct. 24, 2016, she was operating a SEPTA bus on Route 115, from Delaware County Community College to Philadelphia International Airport. She was traveling in the left lane and Manu was traveling in the right lane. Both vehicles turned right at a traffic light intersection, and Manu impacted the front passenger side of appellant’s SEPTA bus,” Olson said.
“Appellant was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. After leaving the hospital that day, she received…Manu’s name and address from her supervisor in order to complete an internal SEPTA incident report. In addition, the accident was investigated by the Pennsylvania State Police who issued a police report that identified Manu as the operator of the involved vehicle.”
When filing her initial writ of summons on Oct. 23, 2018, one day before the two-year statute of limitations was to expire, Prince did not name Manu as the driver and by the time Manu was served on Nov. 5, 2018, it was 12 days after the statute of limitations expired.
When an initial complaint was filed on Dec. 12, 2018, Manu filed preliminary objections in May 2019 that he was not named before the statute of limitations expired. After Prince received leave to file an amended complaint and then doing so in August 2019, Manu filed for summary judgment in January 2020 on identical grounds – that he had not been named as a party to the case before the two-year statute of limitations expired.
On March 10, 2020, the trial court granted Manu’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed all claims against him with prejudice, leading Prince to appeal.
Prince argued that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment based on Rule 1032, where Manu was joined as a party after the trial court granted her petition for leave to amend her complaint, and Prince subsequently filed an amended complaint designating Manu as a defendant by name.
Olson explained that the trial court stated in its opinion that it granted Manu’s “motion for summary judgment not because of a failure to commence the lawsuit within the statute of limitations but, rather, because…Manu was an indispensable party and was not properly joined within the two-year statute of limitations.”
“Upon review, we conclude that the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of Manu and dismissing the action against him. Appellant received Manu’s name and address the same day as the accident so that she could include it in her SEPTA incident report. Nonetheless, appellant chose to utilize a pseudo-Doe designation in her writ of summons, filed one day before the statute of limitations expired, and did not substitute Manu’s name until well after the statute of limitations had expired,” Olson concluded.
“Appellant cannot invoke Rule 1032(b) to relate the amended complaint back to the time of the writ of summons because there was no mistaken identification to correct and because Rule 1032(b) has no relation back mechanism. Appellant was aware of Manu’s name when she commenced this action; she merely chose not to use it. As such, because appellant did not join an indispensable party before the statute of limitations had expired and it was no longer possible to add Manu as a party at the time appellant amended her complaint, the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of Manu.”
Superior Court of Pennsylvania case 1188 EDA 2020
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas case 181003162
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com