Court Opinion

ID: 9517875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:35:45.512831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:16:12.594813
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE HAYES delivered the opinion of the court: This is an appeal from an order dismissing with prejudice plaintiff’s complaint for damages allegedly arising from a train-truck collision. A review of the history of the litigation is necessary to highlight the issues raised in this appeal. For convenience, this history will be presented in chronological order with the applicable law interspersed as it becomes involved. 1. On 2 April 1965, the train-truck collision occurred, in which plaintiff was injured. 2. In 1967, prior to the expiration of the two-year Statute of Limitation applicable to plaintiff’s cause of action (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1965, 1967, Chapter 83, Section 15), plaintiff filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County seeking damages for injuries allegedly incurred through the negligence of defendants in the train-truck collision. 3. After one pre-trial conference in the summer of 1969, and on 11 May 1970, a second pre-trial conference was set for 7 July 1970, at which plaintiff was ordered to appear in person. Supreme Court Rule 218(a) gives the trial court the discretion to enter such an order, even when plaintiff’s attorney is, as he must be, fully authorized to act on behalf of plaintiff. “Rule 218. PRE-TRIAL PROCEDURE (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, Chapter 110(A), Section 218) “(a) Conference. In any civil case, the court may hold a pre-trial conference. At the conference counsel familiar with the case and authorized to act shall appear with or without the parties as the court directs, * * 4. On 7 July 1970, plaintiff’s counsel, fully authorized to act on behalf of plaintiff, appeared, but plaintiff did not appear. The court had been notified by plaintiff’s counsel about a week before that plaintiff was in New York City and would be unable to appear. 5. On 8 July 1970, the court entered the following order: “It is therefore ordered, adjudged, and decreed that this cause be and the same is hereby dismissed for noncompliance with Supreme Court Rules 218 and 219(c) and the order of this Court entered on May 11, 1970.” Supreme Court Rule 218(d) provides: “(d) Enforcement. The court shall make and enforce all rules and orders necessary to compel compliance with this rule, and may apply the remedies provided in paragraph (c) of Rule 219.” Supreme Court Rule 219(c) provides: “Rule 219. Consequences of refusal to comply with rules or orders relating to discovery or pre-trial conferences. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, Chapter 110(A), Section 219) (c) Failure to comply with order or rules. If a party, or any person at the instance of or in collusion with a party, unreasonably refuses to comply with any provision of Rules 201 through 218, or fails to comply with any order entered under these rules, the court, on motion, may enter, in addition to remedies elsewhere specifically provided, such orders as are just, including, among others, the following: (v) that, as to claims or defenses asserted in any pleading to which that issue is material, a judgment by default be entered against the offending party or that his suit be dismissed with or without prejudice;” 6. On 15 October 1970, plaintiff’s timely motion to vacate the order of dismissal of 8 July 1970 was denied. 7. Plaintiff elected not to appeal from the order of dismissal and the refusal to vacate the same. 8. Instead, plaintiff elected to re-file her complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County, which she did on 15 December 1970. In doing so, plaintiff was relying on a section of the Statute of Limitations, not only as obviating what would otherwise have been a limitation bar to the re-filing, but also, as amended in May of 1967, as expressly authorizing the re-filing where the earlier dismissal had been “for want of prosecution”. The section (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, Chapter 83, Section 24a) provides as follows: “Section 24a. Commencement of new action upon reversal or nonsuit. In the actions specified in this Act or any other act or contract where the time for commencing an action is limited, if judgment is given for the plaintiff but reversed on appeal; or if there is a verdict for the plaintiff and, upon matter alleged in arrest of judgment, the judgment is given against the plaintiff; or if the plaintiff is nonsuited, or the action is dismissed for want of prosecution then, whether or not the time limitation for bringing such action expires during the pendency of such suit, the plaintiff, his heirs, executors or administrators may commence a new action within one year or within the remaining period of limitation, whichever is greater, after such judgment is reversed or given against the plaintiff, or after the plaintiff is nonsuited or the action is dismissed for want of prosecution.” (Underlining, other than of the section’s title, is ours to indicate the matter inserted by legislative amendment, effective 25 May 1967) 9. On 20 January 1971, defendants filed an amended motion to dismiss plaintiff’s new complaint for the reason that plaintiff’s action was barred both by the Statute of Limitation and by the res judicata effect given to the 8 July 1970 order of dismissal, entered under Rule 219(c), by Supreme Court Rule 273 (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1969, Chapter 110(A), Section 273.) Supreme Court Rule 273 (effective 1 January 1967, which was also the effective date of Supreme Court Rule 219(c) provides as follows: “Rule 273. EFFECT OF INVOLUNTARY DISMISSAL. Unless the order of dismissal or a statute of this State otherwise specifies, an involuntary dismissal of an action, other than a dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, for improper venue, or for failure to join an indispensable party, operates as an adjudication upon the merits.” 10. On 25 March 1971 the trial court granted defendants’ amended motion, and dismissed plaintiff’s new complaint with prejudice. The matter before us is an appeal from that order of dismissal of the new complaint. Plaintiff’s theory of the case is: (1) Section 24a of our Statute of Limitations is applicable in this case to remove what would otherwise have been a limitation bar to the re-filing of the new complaint in December of 1970; and (2) Section 24a, as amended in late May of 1967, is also a statute of this State which “otherwise specifies” within the meaning of the express exception in Supreme Court Rule 273, so that that Rule imparted no res judicata effect to the 219(c) dismissal order of 8 July 1970. Defendants deny both of plaintiff’s contentions.  Defendants’ denial of plaintiff’s first contention is apparently based on the alleged applicability to this case of the holding in three prior cases that Section 24a, despite its literal applicability, is inapplicable to assist a plaintiff whose limitation problem in filing his second action has been created by his own extreme and self-initiated delay either in prosecuting his first action or in filing his second action after the dismissal of his first action. (Tidwell v. Smith (1965), 57 Ill.App.2d 271, 205 N.E.2d 484; Ray v. Bokorney (1971), 133 Ill.App.2d 141, 272 N.E.2d 836; Quirino v. Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, 10 Ill.App.3d 148.) Since the record here discloses no such extreme and self-initiated delay by this plaintiff, we conclude that the “extreme delay” exception to the applicability of Section 24a does not apply in this case.  We perceive another ground upon which to question the applicability of Section 24a to this case. Is the dismissal order of 8 July 1970 an order of dismissal “for want of prosecution” within the meaning of amended Section 24a? On its face, the order of dismissal of 8 July 1970 is essentially based on “noncompliance with * * * the order of this Court entered on May 11, 1970”, and therefore is not expressly “for want of prosecution”. On the other hand, the order of 11 May 1970 was entered under the authority of Rule 218(a), and the order of 8 July 1970 was entered under the authority of Rules 218(d) and 219(c). Therefore, the order of 8 July 1970 is squarely based on Rules 218 and 219. The question then arises: what is the purpose of Rules 218 and 219? The purpose, inter alia, is to authorize and implement the pre-trial conference procedure. That procedure was adopted to expedite the prosecution of civil cases by providing a pre-trial mechanism to sift out the basic issues between the parties and to formulate them as precisely and accurately as possible, to reach a stipulation of as much of the evidence as possible, and to reach an agreed settlement of the case, if possible. All to what end? Obviously, to move the case more expeditiously either to settlement or to trial, and, if to trial, then to a more expeditious trial; in short, to expedite the prosecution of the case. Hence, we think that the penalties authorized under Rules 218 and 219 for failure to participate in the pre-trial conference procedure in accord with the orders of the trial court are essentially penalties “for want of prosecution” within the meaning of Section 24a. In reaching this conclusion, we are mindful of the general proposition that Section 24a, being remedial in nature, is to be liberally construed in order to enable it to achieve its remedial purpose. We also note as an analogy a dictum in the case of Casillas v. Rosengren (1967), 86 Ill.App.2d 139, 229 N.E.2d 141. At a time when Section 24a did not contain any reference to dismissal “for want of prosecution” but did refer to situations in which a plaintiff was “nonsuited”, the Court in dictum in Casillas construed a dismissal “for want of prosecution” as an “involuntary nonsuit” within the meaning of “nonsuited” in Section 24a. (It seems unlikely that the Casillas case was the reason why the Legislature added the phrase “for want of prosecution” to Section 24a on 25 May 1967, because the Casillas opinion is dated 9 August 1967.)  We conclude that Section 24a is applicable in this case to remove what would otherwise have been a limitation bar to the plaintiff’s re-filing on 15 December 1970. We turn now to plaintiffs second contention. None of the three cases on which defendants relied for the alleged inapplicability of Section 24a has anything to contribute as to the alleged res judicata effect imparted by Rule 273 to the 219(c) (v) order of dismissal. The Tidwell case antedated Rule 273; in the Ray case, the issue does not appear to have been raised; in Quirino, the issue was raised and described, but the court found it unnecessary to decide the issue in disposing of the case. We are not so fortunate.  Defendants deny that Section 24a is a statute of this State which “otherwise specifies” within the meaning of the express exception in Rule 273, for the reason that Section 24a is limited on its face to the single matter of curing what would otherwise be a limitation bar to the filing of the second action, and does not even purport to address itself to the matter of the res judicata effect imparted by Rule 273 to the 219(c) dismissal order of 8 July 1970. There is, however, some precedent to the contrary in Mages Sports Arenas, Inc. v. Winston Park Shopping Center, Inc. (1969), 112 Ill.App.2d 409, 251 N.E.2d 334. That case involved alternative holdings. In its first alternative holding, the Court held that Rule 273 was inapplicable under the circumstances presented in the case. In its second alternative holding, the Court held that, even if Rule 273 had been applicable, the rule’s own express exception of cases in which “a statute of this State otherwise specifies” would have applied because Section 24a, as amended in late May of 1967 to include the situation in which an “action is dismissed for want of prosecution” and in which the plaintiff had commenced a new action “within the remaining period of limitation”, is such a statute. Concededly, the authority of the case as precedent is weakened by the fact that its holding applicable here was merely a second alternative holding, but, in the absence of any other precedent directly in point, we see no reason to ignore it or to treat it as dictum. In addition, we see possible significance in the prompt legislative amendment of Section 24a, to include tire situation in which an action is dismissed “for want of prosecution”, only five months after Rule 273 had become operative. We conclude that amended Section 24a is a statute of this State which “otherwise specifies” within the meaning of the express exception in Rule 273. Accordingly, we reverse the trial court herein, and remand the case for such further proceedings as may be had and as are not inconsistent herewith.  We are not unaware of the fact that our holding may be thought to deprive the Supreme Court of its power adequately to enforce Rules 201 through 218. "We do not agree that it does so. We think, rather, that a close reading of Rule 219(c) (v) discloses that the Supreme Court meant thereby to require that every order of dismissal entered under its authority state expressly on its face whether it is entered “with prejudice” or “without prejudice”. Should it expressly state that it was entered “with prejudice”, then Rule 273 would merely confirm that the order operated “as an adjudication on the merits”. The party affected would be expressly alerted to the significance of this dismissal order, would know that his sole opportunity to escape the order lay in an appeal therefrom and that Section 24a provided no alternative route of escape (for the simple reason that Section 24a does not address itself to dismissals expressly “with prejudice for want of prosecution”), and would not be booby-trapped into the false route of re-filing by a failure to appreciate the possible res judicata effect imparted by Rule 273 to a “silent” Rule 219(c) (v) order of dismissal. On the other hand, should the 219(c) (v) order of dismissal expressly state that it was entered “without prejudice”, then the order would fall squarely under the express exception in Rule 273 for an order of dismissal which “otherwise specifies”. None of the unfortunate imbroglio involved in the instant case would be involved, if trial courts would comply with the express requirement which we discern in Rule 219(c) (v) that every order of dismissal entered under the authority of that Rule shall state expressly on its face that it has been entered either “with prejudice” or “without prejudice”, as the intent may be. Reversed and remanded. LEIGHTON, J., concurs.