Opinion ID: 2170439
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Merits of Plaintiff's Claim.

Text: As for the fourth factor listed in Ward , whether the plaintiff's claim has merit, the trial court found that the delay in responding to discovery requests suggested a lack of merit and that defendant Flege's liability seemed questionable based on its review of witness Smith's deposition. Admittedly, we have some doubts concerning the trial court's analysis of this particular factor; and we cannot wholeheartedly accept authority encouraging the trial court to consider the merits when ruling on a motion to dismiss for lack of prosecution. Often, in a case where the plaintiff has purportedly failed to prosecute, the trial court simply would not have a sufficient record to determine whether the claim had merit in the sense of the plaintiff's likelihood of success on the merits. The plaintiffs argue that this meritoriousness factor should be analyzed only in terms of whether the plaintiff failed to state a claim; [26] but if there is such a failure to state a claim, the defendant would more appropriately obtain dismissal under CR 12 (state equiv. of Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6)), rather than CR 41.02 (failure to prosecute). So, in a typical case, the meritorious nature of a plaintiffs claim may be difficult to assess and of minimal value because even a meritorious case may be dismissed under CR 41.02 if the totality of the circumstances shows that the plaintiff is not actively prosecuting the case. While we do not encourage trial courts to assess the merits of a claim in ruling on a motion to dismiss for want of prosecution on poorly developed records, we do not think the trial court here abused its discretion in considering, among other relevant factors, the fact of questionable liability of one defendant. We do recognize here though that under the facts of this case, clearly, someone would be presumably liable to the plaintiffs, who were Karen's passengers at the time of the interstate collision. If the questionable liability here of one of the two co-defendants were the sole factor considered, we might be apt to conclude that the trial court had abused its discretion. But under the facts of this case, we do not think it was reversible error for the trial court to consider questionable liability of one defendant as one factor to consider or to infer possible lack of merit from inadequately explained delay.