Zielinski v. Philadelphia Piers, Inc. 139 F Facts Paragraph 5 of complaint stated that “a motor-driven vehicle known as a fork lift or chisel, owned, operated, and controlled by the defendant, its agents, servants and employees, was so negligently and carelessly managed”. Sandy Johnson was operating forklift in accident and was unaware that PPI had transferred ownership of company to Carload. As a result, he mistakenly testified that he had been working for PPI. The first Defense of the Answer stated that the Defendant “denies the averments of paragraph 5”. After insurance investigation, Defendant later admitted that it did in fact own the forklift of paragraph 5 and that the forklift was leased to Carload Contractors, Inc. and the pier on which the accident occurred was also owned Defendants. Zielinski did not discover that he had sued the wrong company until the pretrial conference. Zielinski moved to estop Philadelphia Piers from denying the facts alleged in the complaint because the company had allowed him to believe that they were true, in effect anticipating a dismissal of the complaint based on false statements of the parties and suing the wrong party. Procedural History Arguments Presented Z: -asking for trial jury instruction to take facts from paragraph 5 as true regardless Issue Presented Rule When an improper and ineffective answer has been filed and the time allowed to amend the answer has passed, a party will be estopped from denying the allegation and any improper allegations will be deemed as true. Reasoning Answer was ineffective denial of part of paragraph 5 alleging that “a motor driven vehicle known as a fork lift or chisel was owned, operated, and controlled by the defendant, its agents, servants, and employees”. Denial was too general and needed to be more specific, which was that PPI needed to clarify it had transferred ownership to Carload. It is contradicted in other sections of the complaint. Defendants fostered the error by omitting, even when they knew that Sandy Johnson had mistakenly testified and had found that the forklift in the accident was owned by CCI and not them. Holding Judgement