Opinion ID: 2279668
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pre-order prejudice to the plaintiff.

Text: The trial judge recognized, and I agree, that leave to amend should be freely granted if no substantial prejudice would result from permitting the defendant to raise an affirmative defense at a later stage in the litigation. Order at 3 (quoting Whitener v. Washington Metro. Area Transit Auth., 505 A.2d 457, 459 (D.C.1986)). She noted, however, that leave to amend need not be granted where there has been undue delay or where allowance of the amendment would result in undue prejudice to the opposing party. Id. (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 230, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962)). The judge found that, in this case, there was indeed prejudice to the plaintiff' because [a]ll parties [had] gone through the entire discovery period. Time and expense [had] been committed by the plaintiff. Order at 3. The language quoted above, although somewhat cryptic, constitutes a factual finding that Tinker changed his position, and spent time and money, in reliance on the District's failure to plead the statute of limitations until ten months after the suit was brought. It was obviously the judge's view that if the District were permitted to change course after the plaintiff had acted in reliance in the District's initial position, the plaintiff would be significantly prejudiced. A trial judge who has been supervising the litigation obviously knows more than an appellate court knows about the course of the case, and we must sustain her finding that Tinker would be prejudiced unless that finding is unsupported by the record. See D.C.Code § 17-305 (1989). The principal basis for the judge's finding of prejudice appears to have been that Tinker had conducted his discovery in reliance on the District's position. In his separate concurring opinion, Judge Belson makes the point that in order to prevail on Count I (the negligent training count) Tinker would have been required to prove that, as a result of their negligent training, the police officers used excessive force. Accordingly, in Judge Belson's view, any discovery which Tinker had devoted to the question of excessive force would continue to be relevant to the case even if the District was permitted to amend its answer and even if, following that amendment, Count II was dismissed as time-barred. If the time and effort expended on this discovery were not wasted, then, according to Judge Belson, Tinker was not prejudiced. I cannot quarrel with Judge Belson's logic; the use of excessive force was indeed an element of Count I. Although the continued usefulness of Tinker's excessive force discovery for the litigation of Count I is relevant, however, I do not believe that this point conclusively negates Tinker's claim of prejudice. For more than half a year, Tinker's attorneys were led to believe that the statute of limitations was out of the case and that Count II was going to be decided on the merits. In fact, the District expressly stipulated that expert testimony would not be required on the question of excessive force, and thus implicitly represented that counsel for Tinker could try the case on the plaintiff's simplest and strongest claim without retaining expert witnesses. As a result, counsel obviously placed Counts I and III [1] on the back burner and did not conduct discovery on these claims. The strategy adopted by Tinker's attorneys in reliance on the District's actions was not at all unreasonable. The trial judge found that the plaintiff and his counsel are equitably entitled to rely upon the impact of this stipulation. Surely she was absolutely right. Expert witnesses do not come cheap. A litigant in Tinker's position has limited resources available to pay experts or to conduct complex discovery relating to expert testimony. After Tinker's attorneys had secured a stipulation that expert testimony would not be required on the excessive force claim, they concluded that they had an excellent chance of prevailing on that claim, and that it would therefore be unnecessary for them to retain an expert witness or to conduct discovery on Tinker's negligence claims. [2] If the trial judge had granted the District leave to amend its answer, and if the limitations defense to Count II had been sustained, then Tinker's attorneys would have been compelled to alter in a most radical way the mindset and litigation plan pursuant to which they had been conducting the case for more than half a year. It would also belatedly have become necessary for counsel to take Counts I and III off the back burner and proceed with discovery and the naming of experts. Any competent trial lawyer would surely agree that a case (or a part of a case) is a great deal more difficult to put together when, for some reason, counsel has not actively pursued it for a substantial period of time. There was therefore ample support in the record for the judge's finding that Tinker would have been significantly prejudiced if the District had been permitted to amend its answer. To be sure, the judge could plausibly have reached a different result. In my opinion, however, the judge's finding was rational, and it should be sustained under our deferential standard of review.