Rick Landers v. Ford Motor Company

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Plaintiffs, who are the co-administrators of the estate of their daughter Mikyley Rae Reitz (“Reitz” or “Decedent’), filed their original Complaint in this Court on February 7, 2023. The Court dismissed both the original Complaint and First Amended Complaint with leave to amend to provide Plaintiffs with opportunities to cure their defective allegations of subject matter jurisdiction. Ford moved to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint (“2nd AC”) for lack of personal jurisdiction and under for failure to state a claim based on the statute of limitations. The Court concluded that it possessed personal jurisdiction over Ford for the claims alleged against it, and therefore denied the Motion to Dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, but concluded that Plaintiffs had failed to allege sufficient fact to support their invocation of the delayed discovery rule to survive Ford’s arguments based on the applicable statute of limitations. The Court dismissed the 2nd AC’s claims with leave to amend. Plaintiffs filed the 3rd AC and Ford again seeks dismissal based on the statute of limitations. Decedent died on June 19, 2017, in San Luis Obispo…