The Court of Appeals issued an interesting case yesterday to remind us all about the importance of prompt service of process. This case is Amresco Independence Funding, LLC v Renegate Mountain Golf Club, LLC (Tenn. Crt. Apps., Mar. 31, 2015, No. E2014-01160-COA-R3-CV), and the full text can be found here.
The basic facts are that the Plaintiff filed a collection lawsuit against Defendant, but did not obtain valid and timely service of process of the Complaint. Then, after the statute of limitations expired and after one year from the date that the original Summons was issued, the Defendant filed a Motion to Dismiss. In the Motion, the Defendant argued that any new Summons would not relate back to the Complaint filing date and, as a result, the lawsuit was too late.
This is a good argument. Under Tenn. Rule. Civ. P. 3:
If process remains unissued for 90 days or is not served within 90 days from issuance, regardless of the reason, the plaintiff cannot rely upon the original commencement to toll the running of a statute of limitations unless the plaintiff continues the action by obtaining issuance of new process within one year from issuance of the previous process or, if no process is issued, within one year of the filing of the complaint.
The Court of Appeals agreed with this analysis and upheld the dismissal.
So, as a rule of thumb, don’t think that because you filed your lawsuit that all your statute of limitations issues go away. Indeed, if you simply file the lawsuit and then don’t obtain service of process, your time-sensitive claims could potentially expire.
And this isn’t just a rule that penalizes lazy lawyers. I’ve filed lawsuits to satisfy deadlines, but then considered not serving the Summons because the parties were engaged in settlement talks or waiting for a sale or some other event to occur.
Under Rule 3, the mere filing of the lawsuit may not be enough to save your claims.
Creditors Rights 101 