Case Name: Jessie Mae EALEY, Petitioner, v. INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA, Respondent
Court: Supreme Court of Texas
Jurisdiction: Texas
Decision Date: 1983-07-20
Citations: 660 S.W.2d 50
Docket Number: No. C-1734
Parties: Jessie Mae EALEY, Petitioner, v. INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA, Respondent.
Judges: CAMPBELL, J., joins in this dissent.
Reporter: South Western Reporter Second Series
Volume: 660
Pages: 50–55

Head Matter:
Jessie Mae EALEY, Petitioner, v. INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA, Respondent.
No. C-1734.
Supreme Court of Texas.
July 20, 1983.
Rehearing Denied Dec. 7, 1983.
John T. McCully, Dallas, for petitioner.
Maxwell, Godwin & Carlton, Keith A. Glover, Dallas, for respondent.

Opinion:
SPEARS, Justice.
Pacific Employers Insurance Company (Pacific) appealed a workers' compensation award to Jessie Mae Ealey. The district court dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction. The court of appeals reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded the cause for trial on the merits. (Per curiam opinion unpublished pursuant to Rule 452 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure.) We affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.
The Industrial Accident Board (Board) granted a workers' compensation award to Ealey against Pacific on April 1,1981. The Board stated in its Special Findings that
the insurance carrier reports the correct name of carrier as Pacific Employers Insurance Company and not Insurance Company of North America; that named carriers are of the same group and address and all parties have had due notice. Therefore, award entered herein named Pacific Employers Insurance Company as the correct carrier.
In order to appeal the Board's decision, Pacific was required to file its Notice of Intention to Appeal within twenty days of the award and then to file the suit within twenty days of filing that notice. See Tex. Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 8307, § 5.
Pacific is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Insurance Company of North America (INA). Claims against Pacific are handled in the same offices and by the same persons as claims against INA. Pacific decided to appeal the award to Ealey. On April 6, 1981, a Notice of Intention to Appeal was filed, correctly naming Pacific as the party intending to appeal. Two days later, however, the suit was filed naming INA, not Pacific, as the carrier against whom an award was made and as the appealing party. The original petition was otherwise accurate, correctly listing the claimant as Ea-ley, the date of injury, the type of injury, the name of Ealey's employer, the number and nature of the proceedings before the Board, the date of the Board's award, and the date of the Notice of Intention to Appeal.
In response to Ealey's answer and motion to dismiss, Pacific later filed a first amended original petition naming Pacific as the carrier against whom Ealey had received her award and as the appellant. Accompanying this petition was an affidavit, uncontested by Ealey, that attributed the naming of INA in the original petition to a clerical error.
The question presented is whether the limitation period governing appeals from the Board was tolled when the petition was filed. We hold that the filing of the petition stopped the running of the limitation period against the appeal of Pacific, the interested carrier.
There can be no doubt that the original petition thoroughly apprised Ealey of the specific facts and the nature of the appeal. Ealey's full awareness of the relevant circumstances is demonstrated by her answer, which stated that Pacific was the proper party to bring the action and that the petition had erroneously listed INA as the carrier against whom the award was entered. In addition, attached to her answer were copies of the Board's award and Pacific's Notice of Intention to Appeal.
Ealey nevertheless contends that the trial court's granting of her motion to dismiss the appeal was correct because Pacific did not comply with the jurisdictional requirement of filing suit within the time allowed by article 8307, § 5. She argues that Pacific's first amended petition did not relate back to the timely-filed original petition because that petition neither listed Pacific as the appellant nor correctly stated that Pacific was the interested carrier in the proceedings before the Board. We disagree.
The requirement of article 8307, § 5 that appeals from Board decisions must be filed within twenty days of giving notice of intention to appeal is a general statute of limitations. Richards v. Consolidated Underwriters, 411 S.W.2d 436, 437 (Tex.Civ.App.—Beaumont 1967, writ ref'd). Compliance with this requirement is necessary to invoke the district court's jurisdiction. Id. Consequently, when a party fails to file suit within the prescribed time, his right to appeal is lost. Conversely, an original petition filed within the limitation period stops the running of the statute against all claims asserted in that petition.
Whether Pacific's claim was asserted by the timely-filed petition in this case must be determined in light of the purpose behind statutes of limitations.
The primary purpose of a statute of limitations is to compel the exercise of a right within a reasonable time so that the opposite party has a fair opportunity to defend while witnesses are available and the evidence is fresh in their minds.
Continental Southern Lines, Inc. v. Hilland, 528 S.W.2d 828, 831 (Tex.1975). A timely-filed petition fulfills this purpose and, accordingly, preserves a party's appeal from a Board decision when it gives fair notice of that appeal to the opposing party. In resolving the question of fair notice, we must consider the petition in its entirety and construe it as favorably as possible for Pacific, the appealing party. Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company v. Square, 526 S.W.2d 635, 636 (Tex.Civ.App.—Waco 1975, writ ref'd n.r.e.).
Although the original petition before us erroneously named INA as the interested and appealing carrier, it nevertheless informed Ealey of an appeal of a specific Board award in her favor. She acknowledged in her answer that INA did not even participate in the Board proceedings in this case and that her award was against Pacific, not INA as the petition mistakenly asserted. In all other matters, the petition fully, specifically, and accurately identified the nature of the appeal.
Presented with facts almost identical to the facts in this case, the court in Sanchez v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Company, 543 S.W.2d 888 (Tex.Civ.App.—San Antonio 1976, writ ref'd n.r.e.), held that the running of the limitation period was tolled. In Sanchez, the carrier before the Board erroneously brought its appeal in the name of its parent company. The error was corrected after the time for filing suit had passed. Nevertheless, because "it was conclusively established that no one was misled or placed at a disadvantage by this error," the court concluded that the carrier had properly invoked the jurisdiction of the district court in compliance with article 8307, § 5. Id. at 890.
Similarly, in Womack Machine Supply Company of Houston v. Fannin Bank, 504 S.W.2d 827 (Tex.1974) (Womack), we approved a holding of the court of civil appeals (499 S.W.2d 917, 919) that the statute of limitations was tolled by the filing of a petition in which the party bringing suit had misnamed itself. In that case, as in this case, the record showed both the identity of the real party plaintiff and the defendant's knowledge of that identity. The court of civil appeals followed the reasoning given in Wisconsin Chair Company v. I.G. Ely Company, 91 S.W.2d 913, 914 (Tex.Civ.App.—Fort Worth 1936, no writ), in which the court stated,
"If a defendant, who has been sued under the wrong name, makes his appearance . and such appearance serves to toll the statute of limitations, . how can it be justly said that, where a defendant is sued in his proper name by a plaintiff, whose name is incorrectly designated, he may be heard to say that he can plead the statute of limitations against the amended petition which substitutes the properly named plaintiff?"
The court in Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company v. Square, 526 S.W.2d 635 (Tex.Civ.App.—Waco 1975, writ ref'd n.r.e.), was confronted with facts similar to those in Sanchez and Womack and reached the same conclusion as the courts in those cases. In that case, the Board awarded Square work ers compensation benefits against Travelers Insurance Company. Travelers gave the required Notice of Intention to Appeal and then timely filed a petition naming "Charter Oak Fire Insurance Co. a/k/a Travelers Insurance Co." as plaintiff. Charter Oak was not a party to the Board proceedings and had not appeared in any way until the filing of the petition. The court held that the petition tolled the statute because the only logical explanation for the sequence of proceedings before the Board and the district court was that Travelers was "in truth and in fact" the real plaintiff. Id. at 637.
Ealey argues that these cases are distinguishable from this case. One Texas decision arguably supports her position. In Transport Insurance Company v. Jaeger, 534 S.W.2d 389 (Tex.Civ.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1976, writ ref'd n.r.e.), the court held that the trial court properly dismissed an insurance carrier's appeal from a Board decision when the carrier filed suit only in the name of the employer. This holding, however, was based on the court's conclusion that the petition attempted to assert a claim on behalf of the employer, who was not an interested party within the meaning of the statute and therefore could not appeal a Board award. The court characterized the error in the petition as a mistake as to law, not a misnomer. Jaeger is therefore distinguishable from this case and the other cases we have discussed.
In this case, the erroneous naming of INA as plaintiff did not mislead Ealey or place her at a disadvantage, since it was clear from the petition and the prior proceedings that Pacific was the only carrier who could appeal, and was appealing, the Board's decision. We therefore hold that the filing of the original petition tolled the running of the limitation period against Pacific's appeal.
The judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed.