## Facts

- A general contractor renovated an occupied federal building in Nashville, Tennessee, while government employees continued working inside.
- Nelle B. Durham, a stenographic clerk working in the building, was struck on the head on August 17, 1938 by a heavy piece of timber that fell from a scaffold about 10 feet above the floor.
- Durham timely filed a negligence complaint alleging defendants’ employees negligently handled heavy timbers on and about the scaffold, causing a board to fall and injure her.
- During the first trial, the court permitted Durham to amend her complaint to allege that defendants negligently erected the scaffold in a manner that failed to protect persons required to work beneath it and made it reasonably foreseeable that heavy objects would fall.
- After the amendment was filed, the first jury panel was dismissed and the case was continued; defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint as time-barred, arguing it stated a new cause of action.
- The district court denied dismissal; at retrial the jury returned a verdict for Durham, and judgment was entered against the contractor for $6,500 plus costs (with the superintendent dismissed from the case).
- The contractor appealed, principally challenging the amendment as barred by the statute of limitations.

## Issues

1. Whether the amended complaint alleged a new cause of action, such that it did not relate back to the original filing date and was barred by the applicable statute of limitations.
2. Whether the evidence supported the jury’s finding of negligence and a duty of reasonable care owed by the contractor to a non-employee occupant working under the scaffold.

## Decision

- The court of appeals affirmed the judgment for Durham.
- The court held the amendment did not state a new cause of action because it concerned the same accident, injury, time, place, actors, and instrumentality (the scaffold and falling timber).
- The amended allegations were treated as a more particular statement and an alternate negligence theory arising from the same operative event, so the amendment related back and was not time-barred.
- The court upheld the jury’s determination of negligence and found no reversible error in the trial court’s handling of the amendment and limitations defense.

## Legal Principles

- An amended pleading that changes or elaborates the theory of negligence, but is grounded in the same injurious event described in a timely original pleading, relates back for limitations purposes.
- Limitations defenses generally do not bar amendments when the defendant had timely notice of the essential factual occurrence giving rise to the claim.
- A contractor performing work in an occupied building owes a duty of reasonable care to protect non-employee occupants required to work in areas affected by the construction, including by taking reasonable precautions against foreseeable falling objects.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a personal-injury judgment where an amended negligence complaint, though reframed to emphasize unsafe scaffold erection rather than mishandling of timber, was based on the same accident and therefore related back to the original timely filing, defeating the statute-of-limitations challenge and leaving the jury’s negligence verdict undisturbed.


Blair v. Durham, 134 F.2d 729 (6th Cir. 1943)