Arizonans who want to sue to recover damages don’t have to get all the legal jargon right in the first go-round, just the basic facts.

The state Court of Appeals reversed a Cochise County Superior Court judge’s ruling against a man who filed a lawsuit after being injured in a 2001 accident at Fort Huachuca, an Army base in Sierra Vista.

James Dennis Rowland had filed a notice of complaint against a contractor, Kellogg Brown and Root Inc., a few days before the two-year filing deadline passed.

Mr. Rowland’s notice consisted of a four-sentence letter stating that he’d been injured by a forklift operator employed by the company and that he was seeking $5 million in damages for injuries, lost time and medical expenses.

However, the Cochise County court clerk refused to file the document on grounds that it wasn’t properly drafted as a lawsuit.

Mr. Rowland then hired an attorney who filed a lawsuit after the deadline passed, but the trial later granted Kellogg’s request to rule in favor of the company on grounds that Rowland’s letter wasn’t a proper lawsuit and that the lawsuit filed later was too late.

However, the Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that the letter provided just enough specifics to put Kellogg on notice of Mr. Rowland’s claim against the company.

Letter Format

It didn’t matter that the letter failed to comply with several requirements for the format of lawsuits, including lacking both a formal caption and numbered paragraphs, Judge Philip G. Espinosa wrote in a unanimous ruling June 20 by a three-judge Court of Appeals panel in Tucson.

Though there apparently is no Arizona law or court rule that permits a clerk court to reject an improperly formatted lawsuit, the Cochise County court clerk was not at fault “given the close and novel issue presented and the marginally adequate nature of Rowlands ‘complaint,’’’ Judge Espinosa wrote.

The ruling has the effect of reviving Mr. Rowland’s lawsuit. —

FYI

The case is Rowland vs. Kellogg Brown and Root Inc., 2 CA-CV 2004-0209.

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