William Coons appeals from the district court’s order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), which reversed, on statute of limitations grounds, a $328,000 judgment in his favor against appellee Industrial Knife Company. He also appeals from the district court’s award of attorney’s fees and expenses to Industrial Knife
I.
Coons commenced this diversity action on September 29, 2003, exactly three years after he suffered a serious hand injury while changing an industrial paper-cutting knife (“the C-700 knife”) at his place of employment. He alleged in the сomplaint that A.F. Chapman Corporation manufactured and distributed the C-700 knife and was liable for his injuries under various state law product liability theories. Over a year later, on October 18, 2004, A.F. Chapman requested leave to file a third-party claim for contribution against Industrial Knife, citing “recent pre-trial discovery” revealing that Industriаl Knife was the actual manufacturer and/or distributor of the C-700 knife. Leave was granted, and Industrial Knife filed an answer on January 21, 2005, denying that it manufactures knives but acknowledging that it might have supplied or distributed the C-700 knife.
Industrial Knife then filed its own third-party complaint against another member of the knife supply chain, Heritage Knife Company, which in turn filed сross-claims against the other defendants. After the dust settled, Coons moved for leave to amend his original complaint on May 5, 2005, to add claims against Industrial Knife and Heritage Knife. The district court allowed the unopposed request to amend, and Industrial Knife filed an answer asserting the statute of limitations as one of its affirmative dеfenses.
Nearly two years later, Industrial Knife and Heritage Knife filed a joint “motion to dismiss” raising the statute of limitations defense. The district court denied that motion as untimely, noting that the deadline for filing dispositive pre-trial motions had passed months earlier. The case against Industrial Knife and Heritage Knife then went to trial before a jury. 1 At thе close of Coons’s case, the defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law, invoking the statute of limitations. The district court denied that motion without prejudice, remarking that the motion could be “renewed after all the evidence. Then we can spend as much time as we need.” The motion was not renewed before the jury retired to deliberate. The jury returned a verdict finding Industrial Knife liable and Heritage Knife not liable, and awarding Coons $350,000 in compensatory damages.
The district court entered judgment against Industrial Knife in the amount of $328,247.08, which reflected an adjustment for Coons’s comparative negligence and the addition of pre-judgment interest. Industriаl Knife filed a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) within the then-applicable ten-day time limit, arguing that the judgment could not stand because Coons’s claims against Industrial Knife were time-barred. In response to the motion, the district court issued a thoughtful and comprehensive opinion in which it concluded that Industrial Knife’s statute of limitations defense was indeed meritorious. It consequently reversed and entered judgment for Industrial Knife. The district court also entered an order awarding Industrial Knife $6,886 in attorney’s fees and $1,358 in expenses as a sanction for Coons’s earlier untimely designation of expert witnesses. Coons appeals from the judgment and the award.
II.
The principal question on appeal is whether the district court erred in enter
That argument is easily rejected as to the failure to file a timely pre-trial motion. With one narrow exception not applicable here, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(h)(1), a party does not waive a properly pleaded defense by failing to raise it by motion beforе trial.
See McIntosh v. Antonino,
Coons’s argument that the limitations defense was waived at trial because it was not raised in a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law is likewise off the mark. It is true that a Rule 50(b) motion is the standard way to raise a limitations defense that has been rejected by the jury.
See, e.g., Pessotti v. Eagle Mfg. Co.,
In any event, the district court noted as an alternative ground for its ruling that Industrial Knife’s motion to alter or amend the judgment could be construed as a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law because it was filed within the Rule 50(b) time limit
3
and contained all of the information required for a Rule 50(b) motion. The district court was correct.
See Cosgrove,
The grounds for Industrial Knife’s limitations defense are easily stated. Under Massachusetts law, Coons had to commence his action within three years
When, as here, the plaintiff amends his complaint to add a state law claim against a new party, Rule 15(c) provides two ways in which the amended complaint cаn relate back to the original complaint. Rule 15(c)(1)(C) 5 sets out a federal relation back test with three essential requirements:
First, the claim asserted against the newly-designated defendant must satisfy the terms of Rule 15(c)(1)(B), which provides that the claim must arise out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out — or аttempted to be set out — in the original pleading.
Second, within the period provided by [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure] 4(m) for serving the summons and complaint, the party to be brought in by amendment must have received such notice of the action that it will not be prejudiced in defending on the merits.
Third, it must appear that within the same time frame the newly-designated defendant either knew or should have known that the action would have been brought against it, but for a mistake concerning the proper party’s identity.
Morel v. DaimlerChrysler AG,
In addition to the federal test, Rule 15(c)(1)(A) allows for relation back when “the law that provides the applicable statute of limitations” — in this case, Massachusetts law — “allows relation back.” Fed. R.Civ.P. 15(c)(1)(A). We have described the choice between these two provisions as “a one-way ratchet,” meaning that a party is entitled to invoke the more permissive relation back rule, whether that is the state rule or the federal rule set out in Rule 15(c)(1)(C).
Morel,
In its motion below, Industrial Knife set forth the timeline of events and made the obvious point that Coons filed his amended complaint more than three years after his cause of action accrued. Industrial Knife also anticipated that Coons might make a relation back counterargument. It contended that the amended complaint did not relate back to the original complaint under the federal test in Rule 15(c)(1)(C) because the notice requirement was not met. That is, Industrial Knife claimed that it received no notice of the action “within the period provided by Rule 4(m) for serving the
Coons, for his part, did not discuss Rule 15(c) in the district court at all. In his opposition to Industrial Knife’s motion, he staked out a categorical position grounded in Rule 14, which governs third-party practice:
Plaintiffs motion to amend his complaint, filed in May 2005, clearly stated that the grounds upon which plaintiff sought to assert direct claims against Industrial and Heritage was based upon Rule 14(a). Rule 15, upon which defendant repeatedly relies, including the case law interpreting same, has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the fact that plaintiff did not bring the defendants into the case until May 2005. 6
The district court carefully considered the parties’ arguments as they were presented. It first rejected Coons’s Rule 14 argument, and rightly so. Rule 14(a)(3) delineates the circumstances in which a plaintiff may assert claims against a newly added third-party defendant, but it has nothing to say about whether such third-party claims are timely.
See D’Onofrio Constr. Co. v. Recon Co.,
The district court also agreed with Industrial Knife’s federal relation back analysis, finding that Industrial Knife received no notice of the action within the time period prescribed in the rule.
7
We can find no fault with that decision.
8
Coons has pointed to nothing in the record to show that Industrial Knife received notice of any sort within the requirеd time period. Indeed, Coons concedes on appeal that the state law test in Rule 15(c)(1)(A)
We therefore turn to Rule 15(c)(1)(A), which Coons urges us to apply to his amended complaint. A substantial procedural hurdle stands between Coons and that provision. The district court expressly held that Coons forfeited the state lаw argument by failing to raise it in his opposition to Industrial Knife’s post-judgment motion. That decision was well grounded in our precedent. We have frequently emphasized that judges are not obligated to do a party’s work for him, “searching
sua sponte
for issues that may be lurking in the penumbra of the motion papers.”
United States v. Slade,
Coons makes one final effort to save his forfeited state law argument. He starts with the uncontroversial premise that it was Industrial Knife’s burden, as the moving party below, to show that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Coons then posits that Industrial Knifе’s burden obligated it to demonstrate that Coons’s claims did not relate back to the original complaint. Therefore, the failure to discuss Rule 15(c)(1)(A) should be held against Industrial Knife, not him.
The premise of Coons’s argument is accurate enough. A motion for judgment as a matter of law “must specify the judgment sought and the law and facts that entitle the movant to the judgment.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a)(2). But Industrial Knife satisfied its burden of showing that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law by pointing out that, on the undisputed facts, the claims against it were filed well outside the applicable three-year limitations period. Although it is often good strategy for the moving party to anticipate and respond to the strоngest counter-arguments that might be presented, as Industrial Knife did for the federal relation back argument, there is no obligation to do so. Once Industrial Knife “established] that the time period between the plaintiffs injury and the plaintiffs complaint exceeded] the limitations period set forth in the applicable statute,” it was Coons’s burden to “alleg[e] facts which would take his ... claim outside the statute.”
McGuinness v. Cotter,
III.
The other issue on appeal is whether the district court abused its disсretion in awarding Industrial Knife $6,886 in attorney’s fees and $1,358 in expenses as a sanction for Coons’s untimely designation of expert witnesses. The district court wrote a commendably thorough opinion explaining the award, and we have nothing to add to its analysis. Suffice it to say that the district court did not abuse its discre
AFFIRMED.
Notes
. A.F. Chapman was dismissed from the case by stipulation of the parties. By the parties’ consent, the trial was held before a magistrate judge.
. As noted, Industrial Knife and Heritage Knife filed a motion to dismiss well after the deadline for filing dispositive pre-trial motions had passed.
. At the time оf trial, a Rule 50(b) motion had to be filed "[n]o later than 10 days after the entry of judgment,” which was the same as the period for filing a Rule 59(e) motion. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) (2007); Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) (2007). The time period was recently extended to twenty-eight days for both rules. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) (2010); Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) (2010).
. "Under the doctrine of relation back, an amended complaint can be treated, for purposes of the statute of limitations, as having been filed on the date of the original complaint.”
Pessotti,
. The subdivisions of Rule 15(c) were renumbered in 2007 but no substantive changes were made. References in this opinion are to the current numbering scheme.
. Coons also argued that Industrial Knife waived the statute of limitations defense by not opposing his mоtion to amend the complaint. As we have already said, the defense was properly preserved by being asserted in Industrial Knife’s answer.
. Rule 15(c)(1)(C) provides that the newly added party must have received notice "within the period provided by Rule 4(m) for serving the summons and complaint.” Rule 4(m) provides:
If a defendant is not served within 120 days аfter the complaint is filed, the court — on motion or on its own after notice to the plaintiff — must dismiss the action without prejudice against that defendant or order that service be made within a specified time. But if the plaintiff shows good cause for the failure, the court must extend the time for service for an appropriate period. This subdivision (m) does not apply to service in a foreign country under Rule 4(f) or 4(j)(l).
.We do note that several statements in the district court’s opinion might no longer reflect the law in light of the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in
Krupski v. Costa Crociere S.p.A.,
- U.S. -,
. The district court specifically noted this complexity as a reason for not discussing the state law issue sua sponte.