Case Name: Leon LEVY v. Gene STELLY and Southern Pacific Railroad Company
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1973-02-20
Citations: 277 So. 2d 194
Docket Number: No. 5386
Parties: Leon LEVY v. Gene STELLY and Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
Judges: Before REDMANN, LEMMON and STOULIG, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 277
Pages: 194–198

Head Matter:
Leon LEVY v. Gene STELLY and Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
No. 5386.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.
Feb. 20, 1973.
Rehearing Denied April 18, 1973.
Writ Refused June 21, 1973.
Eugene D. Brierre, Garrett, Carl & Roussel, Clifton S. Carl and James H. Le-veque, III, New Orleans, for plaintiff-appellant.
Chaffe, McCall, Phillips, Toler & Sarpy, Jarrell E. Godfrey, Jr., New Orleans, for defendants-appellees.
Before REDMANN, LEMMON and STOULIG, JJ.

Opinion:
LEMMON, Judge.
Plaintiff filed this tort action to recover damages sustained in an automobile accident. He has appealed from a judgment maintaining defendants' exception of prescription.
The parties to this accident have previously been before this court on several occasions. The following dates and events are pertinent in the present action:
1. The accident occurred, on January 21, 1967.
2. Plaintiff filed suit in Jefferson Parish on September 27, 1967 (within one year of accident).
3. Plaintiff filed a second suit in the United States District Court on November 22, 1968 (more than one year after accident). This suit is still pending.
4. The first suit was transferred to Orleans Parish, where it was set for trial on the merits on October 28, 1969. Plaintiff sought an indefinite continuance, preferring to pursue the suit in Federal Court. When plaintiff refused a three week continuance, the trial court dismissed the suit without prejudice. Plaintiff attempted various procedures to have this dismissal reviewed or annulled, the final attempt ending in the denial of certiorari in January, 1972.
5. Plaintiff filed the present action on March 17, 1972.
The trial court maintained the exception of prescription on the basis of C.C. art. 3519, which reads:
"If the plaintiff in this case, after having made his demand, abandons, voluntarily dismisses, or fails to prosecute it at the trial, the interruption is considered as never having happened."
On appeal plaintiff contends that the original suit in State court interrupted prescription and that the subsequent suit in Federal court (filed during that interruption) was not retroactively prescribed by the application of C.C. art. 3519 when the original suit was dismissed. If prescription remained interrupted by the Federal court suit, plaintiff correctly asserts that the present action is not subject to an exception of prescription. Thus, the key issue here is whether the Federal court action became prescribed when the original suit was dismissed.
Prescription is a manner of discharging debts by the effect of time. C.C. art. 3457. Without the legal stability provided by prescription, a person would be required to forever preserve evidence of payment of debts or of other grounds to disprove liability therefor.
Prescription is interrupted by the filing of a suit, which provides the first notice to a debtor that a claim is being judicially asserted. C.C. art. 3518, 3551. It is therefore logical- that any issues as to interruption of prescription by suit should be determined as of the time of the filing of that suit.
Using the time of filing as the test point, we observe that prescription was interrupted by the filing of the original suit, since the one year period provided by C.C. art. 3536 had not yet elapsed. Likewise, at the time suit was filed in Federal court, that action was not subject to a dismissal based on prescription, since prescription remained interrupted by the pending suit.
Defendants argue, however, that C.C. art. 3519 literally prohibits us from now considering the first interruption. We disagree. As stated above, issues as to interruption of prescription are determined as of the time of the filing of the suit sought to be dismissed, and not as of the time of the filing of the exception.
We construe C.C. art. 3519 to apply prospectively to suits filed after a plaintiff abandons, voluntarily dismisses or fails to prosecute his demand. The purpose of the article is to prohibit the plaintiff from voluntarily dismissing his suit on a cause of action and later filing a second suit on the same cause of action. By taking away the benefit of the original interruption, the article prevents the plaintiff from claiming that a new prescriptive period commenced when he dismissed the suit which had previously interrupted prescription. The basic purpose of prescription — to provide legal stability- — is thus fulfilled.
But in the case where a second suit is filed prior to abandonment, voluntary dismissal or failure to prosecute the original demand, the interruption provided by the first suit is still viable at the time of the filing of the second suit, and the interruption remains viable after the dismissal because of the pendency of the second suit. In the present case there was never a time after the one year anniversary date of the accident when a suit asserting plaintiff's cause of action against defendants was not pending in some court.
We conclude that defendants cannot use the facts existing at the time of the filing of their exception to dismiss an action which was not prescribed when the suit was filed. A suit not prescribed when filed cannot later become prescribed by the subsequent dismissal of a previous suit on the same cause of action.
The judgment maintaining the exception of prescription is reversed, and the case is remanded for a trial on the merits.
Reversed and remanded.
. See La.App., 230 So.2d 774; La.App., 248 So.2d 845; and La.App., 254 So.2d 665.
. The following observation in 1 Planiol, Traite Elémentaire <le Droit Civil, Ch. IV, § 5, No. 2692, (12th eel. La.State Law Institute transí. 1959) is pertinent:
". . . (W)here suit is dismissed by the court or abandoned by the plaintiff, the running of prescription will be deemed to have never been interrupted. There is therefore never a new prescription commencing at the date of interruption."
. In this respect we distinguish Adams v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Company, 252 La. 798, 214 So.2d 148 (1968), in which plaintiff filed a second suit the day after his first suit on that cause of action was dismissed.