Home Depot Beats Worker Injury Suit Due to Attorney Email Snafu

Home Depot USA Inc. will escape an employee’s personal injury lawsuit because the plaintiff’s lawyer missed a key deadline due to an email mixup, the Fifth Circuit affirmed, citing the incident as a “cautionary tale.”

Kevin Rollins sued Home Depot for an on-the-job injury he sustained while moving a bathtub. Home Depot filed a motion for summary judgment. The notification of the filing was inadvertently filtered into a part of Rollins’ counsel’s email system marked “other,” instead of the main email box where all prior filings in the case had been received.

As a result, the counsel missed the deadline to respond to any motions. The district court granted summary judgment to Home Depot, and later denied Rollins’ motion to alter the judgment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Monday affirmed, in what it called “a cautionary tale for every attorney who litigates in the era of e-filing.”

“To be sure, we do not question the good faith of Rollins’s counsel,” the court said. But Home Depot’s motion was properly filed to the court’s electronic-filing system, and notice was sent to the email address that Rollins’ attorney provided.

“Rollins’s counsel was plainly in the best position to ensure that his own email was working properly—certainly more so than either the district court or Home Depot,” the appeals court said.

Moreover, Rollins’ counsel could have discovered the motion by checking the case docket after the deadline for such filings had passed, the court noted.

“We see no principled basis for addressing Rollins’s forfeited argument” as to whether Home Depot breached its duty to him and contributed to his injuries, the court said.

The opinion was written by Judge James C. Ho and joined by Judges Andrew S. Oldham and Cory T. Wilson.

Aaron Felton Allison of Austin, Texas, represents Rollins. Bailey & Glasser LLP and Mullin Hoard & Brown LLP represent Home Depot.

The case is Rollins v. Home Depot USA, 5th Cir., No. 20-50736, 8/9/21.