Zielinski v. Philadelphia Piers, Inc.

Zielinski (plaintiff) was injured when a forklift operated by Sandy Johnson collided with his. Zielinski sued Philadelphia Piers, Inc. (defendant), alleging Johnson was its employee operating its forklift. In fact, the operation had been transferred to Carload Contractors, Inc., so Johnson actually worked for Carload, though Johnson, after fifteen years, did not know of the transfer and mistakenly testified he still worked for Philadelphia Piers. Philadelphia Piers filed a general denial but did not clarify the transfer, even though it, Carload, and their shared insurer all knew of Zielinski's error. Zielinski did not discover he had sued the wrong company until the pretrial conference, by which time the statute of limitations barred suing Carload. Zielinski moved to estop Philadelphia Piers from denying the alleged facts.

Whether a defendant should be estopped from denying facts alleged in a complaint where it filed an ineffective denial of those facts and knowingly allowed the plaintiff to continue relying on them.