Opinion ID: 4654718
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Timeliness of Negligence Claims

Text: The district court dismissed Peterson’s negligence claims because it concluded that the statute of limitations had run. All parties now agree that this conclusion is incorrect and request that we reverse the dismissal of the state-law claims. We must oblige, for we agree that the district court was mistaken. Peterson filed his first complaint on January 25, 2016; amended it in July 2016; and voluntarily dismissed it on January 25, 2018. The initial and amended complaint related to Peterson’s alleged injury from 2015. Peterson then filed the present complaint on January 21, 2019, and included negligence counts for the first time, the district court found. Because Peterson exhausted his administrative remedies on January 10, 2016, and the statute of limitations in Illinois is two years for personal-injury claims, 735 ILCS 5/13-202, the district court concluded that Peterson’s negligence claims fell outside the limitations period. The court further concluded—correctly—that the relation-back No. 19-2592 13 doctrine under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c) and 735 ILCS 5/2-616 could not save the claims because that doctrine only applies to amendments of existing complaints, not new causes of action. However, the district court did not take into account 735 ILCS 5/13-217, under which plaintiffs have an “absolute right to refile their complaint within one year” of its voluntary dismissal. Timberlake v. Illini Hosp., 676 N.E.2d 634, 636 (Ill. 1997); 735 ILCS 5/13-217 (West 1994). 3 Under this savings statute, a plaintiff refiling an action can bring new claims “that arose from the ‘same transaction’ alleged in the prior action.” Rocha v. Rudd, 826 F.3d 905, 910 n.3 (7th Cir. 2016) (quoting Richter v. Prairie Farms Dairy, Inc., 53 N.E.3d 1, 15 (Ill. 2016)). Peterson, by refiling this complaint, was not limited to alleging only the causes of action in his original complaint; rather, he was at liberty to include any claims “arising from a single group of operating facts.” Richter, 53 N.E.3d at 15 (citing Hayashi v. Ill. Dep’t of Fin. And Pro. Regul., 25 N.E.3d 570 (Ill. 2014)). His negligence claims relate to the events underlying the initial complaint’s deliberate indifference claims. Thus, regardless of whether Peterson brought his negligence claims in his first two complaints, the savings statute protected those claims from the two-year statute of limitations. 3 In 1995, the Illinois legislature amended this statute when it enacted Public Act 89-7, § 15, but the Supreme Court of Illinois struck down the entire act in Best v. Taylor Mach. Works, 689 N.E.2d 1057 (Ill. 1997). Hudson v. City of Chicago, 889 N.E.2d 210, 214 n.1 (Ill. 2008); Rocha v. Rudd, 826 F.3d 905, 909 n.1 (7th Cir. 2016). The operative language of this statute therefore comes from the pre-1995 version. Rocha, 826 F.3d at 909 n.1. 14 No. 19-2592 The district court erred in dismissing Peterson’s negligence claims for being untimely.