Bailey, J.
Case Summary
After a car accident, Israel Munoz (“Munoz”), an Indiana resident, was sued by Jerome Woroszylo (“Woroszylo”), an Illinois resident, in a federal court in Illinois. Woroszylo filed his case in the federal court shortly before the limitations period for a suit expired. Concluding that it lacked personal jurisdiction over Munoz, the federal court in Illinois dismissed Woroszylo’s action.
Woroszylo subsequently filed suit in Tippecanoe County, relying upon the Journey’s Account Statute to preserve his action. [Footnote omitted.] Munoz moved to dismiss, contending that the statute did not operate to preserve Woroszylo’s claim. The trial court denied Munoz’s motion to dismiss. Munoz sought leave to pursue a discretionary interlocutory appeal of the trial court’s order; we granted Munoz’s motion.
We affirm.
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In response to Woroszylo’s contention that the Statute preserved his claim beyond the two-year term of the statute of limitation for negligence actions, Munoz argued that Woroszylo’s initiation of an action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois was “negligence in the prosecution of the action.” I.C. § 34-11-8-1(a)(1). Munoz also argued that Woroszylo’s filing in Tippecanoe County failed to meet a good faith requirement held by Indiana courts to apply implicitly to cases under the Statute. See Eads v. Community Hosp., 932 N.E.2d 1239, 1244 (Ind. 2010).
While Woroszylo’s pursuit of his claim in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois was plainly a poor decision, we cannot agree with Munoz that it amounts to negligence in the prosecution of the action under the Statute. Woroszylo filed suit in the federal court before the expiration of the Indiana statute of limitations for a personal injury claim. Nor was Woroszylo dilatory in filing suit in Indiana after his claim was dismissed from federal court: Woroszylo’s original suit was dismissed on April 4, 2014, and he filed his claim in Indiana less than two weeks later, on April 15, 2014. Indeed, there is no record before us that Woroszylo made any efforts to appeal the federal court’s order. At no point did any of this fail to satisfy other statutory bars to Woroszylo’s suit, and Munoz’s defense of the suit in the federal court demonstrates that he had notice of the claim. See Eads, 932 N.E.2d at 1244 (observing that failure to pay filing fees and failure to name necessary parties have been held as negligent pursuit of litigation under the Statute).
Munoz contends that, even if Woroszylo’s pursuit of the instant action was not negligent, nevertheless Woroszylo cannot meet the good-faith requirement imputed to the Statute by case law. Munoz is correct that Woroszylo’s decision to file suit in the Northern District of Illinois was a poor one. Indeed, the federal court made the following observations in its order:
Absent any indication that [Munoz] would consent to proceed in this district prior to the filing of the Complaint, [Woroszylo] could have and should have “predicted” that the opposing party in this adversary proceeding would refuse to consent [to personal jurisdiction and venue in the Northern District of Illinois].
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Plaintiff’s elementary mistake and ill-advised strategy do not implicate the interest of justice, and thus the Court declines the Plaintiff’s invitation to transfer the case [to the Northern District of Indiana].
App’x at 28.
The federal court clearly did not consider Woroszylo’s decision to file suit in the Northern District of Illinois to be well-advised; indeed, it considered the decision to be an “elementary mistake” that Woroszylo’s Illinois counsel should have avoided. App’x at 28. The federal court’s decision rejects Woroszylo’s proffered rationale of convenience in pursuit of the litigation, namely, that Woroszylo and his treating physicians all reside in Illinois and that would constitute the most convenient forum for the litigation.
That such an argument would not prevail against a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction is, as the federal court observed, an elementary proposition. But hairsplitting distinctions between “in good faith” and “not in bad faith” aside, there is no evidence that Woroszylo filed suit in federal court with intent to abuse judicial process or create undue delay. As the Indiana Supreme Court observed in interpreting a prior version of the Indiana statute that provides for shifting attorney’s fees as a result of bad faith in litigation:
bad faith is not simply bad judgment or negligence. Rather, it implies the conscious doing of a wrong because of dishonest purpose or moral obliquity. It is different from the negative idea of negligence in that it contemplates a state of mind affirmatively operating with furtive design or ill will.
Mitchell v. Mitchell, 695 N.E.2d 920, 924 (Ind. 1998) (citations and quotations omitted).
Woroszylo’s decision to file suit in the Northern District of Indiana was bad judgment. Bad judgment is not, however, bad faith. Id. Indeed, we note that while the federal court had discretionary authority to decline Woroszylo’s request that his case be transferred into the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, see 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), if Woroszylo had brought suit in an improper venue in an Indiana state court, transfer to an Indiana court with proper venue would have been mandatory under Indiana’s venue rules. See T.R. 75(B). This reflects Indiana courts’ general preference for deciding cases on their merits and for avoiding the construction of procedural obstacles to the presentation of such cases. Lindsey v. De Groot Dairy LLC, 867 N.E.2d 602, 606 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007), trans. denied. Indeed, the very same policy is served by the Journey’s Account Statute.
For all the foregoing reasons, we find no reversible error in the trial court’s denial of Munoz’s motion to dismiss.
Affirmed.
Riley, J., and Barnes, J., concur.