Opinion ID: 1619299
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Bailey's Other Causes of Action

Text: Our holdings in this matter are necessarily limited to those arising from the trial court's grant of summary judgment based upon Defendants' motion for same. That motion posited that Defendants were entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law on the sole legal theory that Bailey had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The only cause of action out of the many set forth in Bailey's original complaint to which the exhaustion doctrine arguably applied is the first one: that Defendants conspired to deny Bailey his due process rights in conjunction with dismissing him. Accordingly, Bailey's remaining original causes of action are as yet unresolved. Complicating the issue of which causes of action remain is Bailey's timing of the filing of an amended complaint. Bailey filed his original complaint on March 9, 2007. Rather than file an answer (or a motion to dismiss), Defendants filed their motion for summary judgment on March 26, 2007. Bailey's Response to the Motion for Summary Judgment was filed on April 25, 2007, and contained a certificate of service showing it was mailed to opposing counsel the same day. By a pleading called Amend Complaint and filed the following day (but containing a certificate of service dated six days earlier), Bailey amended his complaint to include a specific cause of action for wrongful discharge. Although this pleading was never acknowledged overtly by either Defendants or the trial court, we deem the Amend Complaint pleading to have been effective in adding the cause of action. Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 15.01 provides that [a] party may amend the party's pleadings once as a matter of course at any time before a responsive pleading is served. Defendants never filed an answer to the original complaint; rather, they filed their motion for summary judgment. A motion for summary judgment is not a responsive pleading. CitiFinancial Mortgage Co., Inc. v. Beasley, No. W2006-00386-COA-R3-CV, 2007 WL 77289, at  (Tenn.Ct.App. Jan.11, 2007). Accordingly, Bailey filed his Amend Complaint before a responsive pleading was served, and the pleading was therefore effective to add the claim of wrongful discharge. However, Defendants filed nothing to bring this additional cause of action within the reach of their summary judgment motion, even though their arguments concerning exhaustion (and due process) are also relevant to wrongful discharge. The trial court also made no reference to this additional cause of action in its order granting summary judgment, even though its analysis and ours might also be deemed to apply to this count as well. Thus, this cause of action must also be considered on remand.