Title: Lake v. Northern Virginia Women's Medical Ctr.
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 961088
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: February 28, 1997

Present:  Carrico, C.J., Compton, Lacy, Hassell, Keenan, and 
Koontz, JJ., and Poff, Senior Justice 
 
TINA MARIE LAKE 
 
OPINION BY JUSTICE LAWRENCE L. KOONTZ,
v. Record No. 961088                  FEBRUARY 28, 1997 
 
NORTHERN VIRGINIA WOMEN'S MEDICAL 
 CENTER, INC., ET AL. 
 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF FAIRFAX COUNTY 
 
David T. Stitt, Judge 
 
 
In this appeal, we consider whether a plaintiff should be 
permitted to amend a motion for judgment at the threshold of 
trial to substitute the proper corporate defendant where the 
error in the original pleading was known to the defendants and 
actions taken by them misled the plaintiff as to the identity of 
the proper corporate defendant. 
 
The material facts are not in dispute and primarily involve 
the various pleadings filed in this procedurally protracted 
medical malpractice case.  For clarity, however, we will first 
recite those facts in the record which were ultimately disclosed 
by the defendants and which explain the identities and 
relationship of the parties. 
 
Northern Virginia Women's Medical Center, Inc. (the Medical 
Center) operated a medical clinic in Fairfax at which legal 
abortions were performed.  Wayne C. Codding, an accountant, and 
Dr. Thomas H. Gresinger are the sole stockholders of another 
legal entity which owns the Medical Center.  The abortion 
involved in this case did not take place at the Medical Center 
clinic nor was the procedure performed by employees of the 
Medical Center. 
 
Codding and Gresinger are also the sole shareholders of 
Fairfax Square Medical Associates, Inc. (Fairfax Square) which 
operated another medical clinic in Fairfax where the abortion 
involved in this case was performed.  In 1988, Mark A. Barondess, 
in his capacity as assistant secretary of Fairfax Square, filed a 
declaration of fictitious name in the land records of Fairfax 
County to permit Fairfax Square to operate its clinic under the 
name "NOVA Women's Medical Center."  Barondess is counsel for the 
defendants in the present litigation. 
 
In short, Northern Virginia Women's Medical Center, Inc., 
and NOVA Women's Medical Center are separate entities.  Each 
operated an abortion clinic in Fairfax and both were controlled 
by the same individuals. 
 
We now turn to the procedural background of the case 
reflected by the pleadings.  In November 1992, Tina Marie Lake 
filed a motion for judgment for medical malpractice in the 
Circuit Court of Warren County against Joel W. Match, M.D.,
1 the 
Medical Center, Gresinger, and Codding.  Upon motion of the 
defendants, a change of venue to the Circuit Court of Fairfax 
County was granted, and an amended motion for judgment was filed 
in that court on February 11, 1993.  Lake alleged that she had 
suffered permanent physical injury during an abortion performed 
in April 1991, in the course of which her uterus and an artery 
were lacerated.  Lake further alleged that Match performed the 
abortion, and that Gresinger and Codding were the owners of the 
                     
     
1Dr. Match is not a party to this appeal. 
Medical Center "which operated a clinic that performed abortions 
. . . in Fairfax, Virginia." 
 
Responding to the 1993 motion for judgment, Gresinger, 
Codding, and the Medical Center (hereinafter collectively, the 
defendants), acting in concert, filed grounds of defense in which 
they admitted the allegations of the motion for judgment which 
identified them as parties, admitted that the Medical Center was 
a corporation that performed abortions at a clinic in Fairfax, 
and admitted that Gresinger and Codding were the sole 
stockholders and officers of the Medical Center.  Additionally, 
the defendants admitted having required or approved of 
administrative procedures utilized by Match and other employees 
of the clinic.  This pleading and subsequent pleadings and 
discovery filed by the defendants were signed by Barondess, as 
counsel. 
 
Following extensive pre-trial proceedings, Lake took a 
voluntary nonsuit to the 1993 motion for judgment when her 
attorney became ill and otherwise unavailable.  On June 17, 1994, 
Lake filed a new motion for judgment against the same parties, 
asserting the same facts asserted in the 1993 motion for 
judgment.  The defendants filed a demurrer, which the trial court 
ultimately overruled after permitting Lake to again amend her 
motion for judgment.  Thereafter, the defendants participated in 
discovery and other pre-trial proceedings, never expressly 
asserting that the Medical Center was not the clinic where Lake 
received her abortion. 
 
In addition to these proceedings, in response to a motion to 
compel discovery filed by Match, the trial court ordered, inter 
alia, that the discovery related to the 1993 motion for judgment 
would be incorporated into the new suit.  This discovery 
contained representations by the defendants that would raise the 
reasonable inference that the Medical Center owned and operated 
the clinic where Lake received her abortion and that its 
principals exercised administrative control over the clinic's 
policies and personnel. 
 
On December 1, 1995, the defendants filed a motion to 
dismiss, asserting for the first time that Lake's abortion had 
been performed in the clinic owned and operated by Fairfax Square 
and which was not associated with the Medical Center, its 
employees, or its clinic.
2  Gresinger and Codding also sought 
dismissal, asserting that their liability could only be 
predicated on a "piercing of the corporate veil" of Fairfax 
Square, which would make Fairfax Square an absent necessary 
party. 
 
On December 8, 1995, three days before the trial was 
scheduled to commence, the trial court conducted a hearing on the 
motion to dismiss.  During argument, Barondess stated that 
Fairfax Square operated the clinic where Lake's abortion was 
performed by Match and that Gresinger was the medical director of 
                     
     
2As was the case with most of the pleadings filed by the 
defendants, this motion to dismiss was styled in the name of 
Northern Virginia Women's Medical Clinic, rather than Northern 
Virginia Women's Medical Center, Inc., the accurate name of the 
entity against which the suit was brought, or NOVA Women's 
Medical Center, the accurate trade name of the owner of the 
clinic in question. 
that clinic.  Barondess asserted, however, that he and the 
defendants had not misrepresented that the Medical Center 
operated this particular clinic because Lake's counsel "never 
asked the question as to the ownership of the clinic, as to what 
corporate entity operated that facility."  He further asserted 
that "there was no concealing [of Fairfax Square's identity], no 
effort to conceal whatsoever.  We just didn't raise this 
particular issue until this time."  Rather, the defendants 
characterized their posture as having admitted that the Medical 
Center operated an abortion clinic in Fairfax, which was "a 
completely accurate statement" since it had done so at one time.
3
 
During the hearing, Lake made motions to amend her motion 
for judgment to include Fairfax Square and for a continuance, or 
in the alternative for a second nonsuit without prejudice.  The 
trial court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss and Lake's 
motion for a second nonsuit.  Although not expressly addressed in 
the trial court's summation during the hearing or its subsequent 
order, Lake's motions to amend the motion for judgment and to 
continue the trial were also effectively denied by the trial 
court's ruling that the case would proceed to trial as scheduled. 
 Lake then informed the court that she had dismissed her expert 
witnesses and would not proceed to trial as scheduled.  The 
                     
     
3These assertions reference, in part, the following 
allegation of the motion for judgment which was admitted by the 
defendants in their grounds of defense: "DR. MATCH, with the aid 
of employees of WOMEN'S MEDICAL CENTER, and with the tools and 
facilities of WOMEN'S MEDICAL CENTER, performed an abortion 
procedure on Ms. Lake at THE ABORTION CLINIC in Fairfax, 
Virginia, on April 13, 1991." 
defendants, joined by Match, then sought entry of judgment in 
their favor, which the trial court granted. 
 
Following entry of the final order, Lake obtained an order 
of suspension and filed motions to set aside the judgment and to 
permit amendment of the motion for judgment.  Lake also sought to 
have the trial court impose sanctions on Barondess and the 
defendants for alleged misrepresentations in the pleadings and 
discovery. 
 
At the hearing on Lake's post-judgment motions, Barondess, 
responding to questions from the trial court, conceded that he 
was aware "[a]t the very beginning" that Lake had not named the 
proper corporate defendant in her original suit.  Barondess again 
asserted that the representation that the Medical Center operated 
an abortion clinic in Fairfax was true, since it did, at one 
time, operate an abortion clinic in Fairfax where Lake might 
previously have had an abortion.  Barondess further asserted that 
any admissions which appeared to assert the Medical Center's 
involvement with or control over the employees, facilities, and 
polices of the clinic operated by Fairfax Square were 
"inadvertent oversight[s]." 
 
The trial court stated that it was troubled by the 
irregularities of the case, and that in "the best light . . .  
[Barondess was] flirting with the line between appropriate and 
inappropriate behavior."  Nonetheless, considering Lake's own 
failure to search the land records to discover the true corporate 
ownership of the clinic and her refusal to proceed to trial 
against the individual defendants, the trial court ruled that 
sanctions were not appropriate, and entered an order denying 
Lake's motions. 
 
We awarded Lake this appeal.  Lake assigns numerous errors 
to the trial court's rulings in this case.  However, the issue of 
the denial of the motion to amend the motion for judgment is 
dispositive in our resolution of the appeal. 
 
It is axiomatic that a plaintiff has the duty to name the 
proper parties as defendants in the motion for judgment.  As we 
said in Baldwin v. Norton Hotel, Inc. 163 Va. 76, 80, 175 S.E. 
751, 752 (1934): 
 
It is necessary, in the orderly administration of 
justice, that the identification of parties to a cause 
be certain.  Hence one of the rules of good pleading 
requires that the correct name of the parties litigant 
be used in the pleadings. . . .  These matters are 
elemental, and a mere restatement of them discloses the 
necessity for definiteness and accuracy in naming the 
defendant. 
 
In the present case, the plaintiff clearly failed to 
identify the proper corporate defendant, naming instead a 
corporation controlled by the same individuals and with a name 
similar to the trade name of the proper corporate defendant.  
Barondess admitted to the trial court that he and the defendants 
were aware of the plaintiff's error from "the very beginning."   
 
While the defendants and their counsel had no affirmative 
duty to inform the plaintiff or the trial court of the 
plaintiff's error or to disclose voluntarily the identity of the 
proper corporate defendant, they were subject to the requirement 
that pleadings or other papers signed and submitted to the court 
must be "well grounded in fact . . . and . . . not interposed for 
any improper purpose."  Code § 8.01-271.1; see also Rule 1:4(a) 
and (d).  Accordingly, when responding to the factual allegations 
of a pleading or discovery request, a party is not free to assign 
differing definitions to identical terms from one response to the 
next in order to confuse or obscure the true facts, and, thus to 
mislead the opposing party.  The defendants and their counsel 
were therefore required to respond to the initial motion for 
judgment, participate in discovery, and otherwise conduct 
themselves before the trial court in a manner consistent with 
their knowledge that the Medical Center was not the proper 
corporate defendant. 
 
The record of this case discloses that this was not done.  
Rather, beginning with the initial response to the 1992 motion 
for judgment and continuing up to filing of the motion to 
dismiss, every action of the defendants and their counsel was 
calculated to give the impression that the Medical Center was, 
and admitted to being, the owner of the clinic where Lake 
received her abortion.  Certainly, there is no room for debate 
that the defendants' admission that Lake received an abortion in 
Fairfax on April 13, 1991, at the Medical Center was not "a 
completely accurate statement" as asserted by Barondess, because 
she could not have had more than one abortion on the same day and 
at two different clinics.  See note 3, supra.  Even granting that 
some other representations were potentially made through 
"mistake" and "inadvertent oversight," the resulting effect of 
misrepresenting the identity of the Medical Center as the proper 
corporate defendant understandably misled the plaintiff. 
 
Thus, while the error in naming the incorrect corporate 
defendant was Lake's, the failure to discover this error in a 
timely manner was occasioned by acts of the defendants, either 
deliberate or careless, which would lead any reasonable plaintiff 
to infer that the Medical Center was a proper party to the suit. 
 
Where an error has been made in a pleading with respect to 
the identification of parties, that fact alone will not defeat 
the action.  Code § 8.01-5.  Rather, the trial court may permit 
the error to be cured through an amendment of the pleading to 
substitute the proper party.  Id.  As with any amendment to a 
pleading, whether a substitution of a party should be permitted 
is a matter committed to the sound discretion of the trial court. 
 Rule 1:8.  Nonetheless, we have further recognized that, under 
Rule 1:8, amendment of pleadings should be liberally granted if 
doing so will further the ends of justice.  Fox v. Deese, 234 Va. 
412, 429, 362 S.E.2d 699, 709 (1987).  
 
Amendment of a pleading to substitute a party is especially 
appropriate "'[w]here the substituted party bears some relation 
of interest to the original party and to the suit, and there is 
no change in the cause of action . . . .'"  Jacobson v. Southern 
Biscuit Co., 198 Va. 813, 817, 97 S.E.2d 1, 4 (1957).  "'[The] 
discretionary power of the court to such end is to be liberally 
exerted in favor of, rather than against, the disposition of a 
case upon its merits.'"  Id.
 
The facts of the present appeal are not dissimilar in their 
essential respects from those we considered in Jacobson.  In that 
case, the plaintiffs filed suit on an account they held in the 
name of "Southern Biscuit Company," nominating the defendant 
under this name and adding "Inc."  Southern Biscuit Company, 
Inc., was a Virginia corporation which had dissolved some years 
before the debt in question accrued.  The actual debtor was the 
Weston Biscuit Company, Inc., a Delaware corporation, which had 
assumed control of the assets of Southern Biscuit Company, Inc., 
and continued to operate under the trade name "Southern Biscuit 
Company" in Virginia.   
 
After initially permitting the motion for judgment to be 
amended, the trial court reversed itself and dismissed the suit. 
 We reversed, holding that dismissal was improper because "[t]he 
amendment . . . worked no change in the cause of action sued on, 
the party which it substituted bore a real relation of interest 
to the original party and to the suit, and nobody was misled or 
prejudiced by the mistake."  Id. at 818, 97 S.E.2d at 4-5. 
 
Here, as in Jacobson, the principals of the proper corporate 
defendant have been parties to the suit from the beginning, and 
substitution of the proper corporate defendant would not alter 
the nature of the cause of action.  The rationale of Jacobson 
holds true here, especially in consideration of the acts of the 
defendants which misled Lake as to the identity of the corporate 
defendant.  Accordingly, Lake should have been permitted to 
substitute Fairfax Square for the Medical Center so that the case 
might proceed, after a reasonable continuance, to a disposition 
on its merits.  For these reasons, we hold that the trial court 
erred in not permitting Lake to amend her motion for judgment. 
 
Lake also assigns error to the trial court's denial of her 
motion to impose sanctions against Barondess and the defendants. 
 In light of the reason for our holding that Lake is to be 
permitted to amend her motion for judgment, we will not rule on 
this issue now, but will remand to allow the trial court to 
reconsider its denial of sanctions against Barondess and the 
defendants. 
 
Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court will be 
reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings after the 
court permits Lake to amend her motion for judgment to name the 
proper party defendants. 
 
Reversed and remanded.