Indiana Court of Appeals Bars Personal Injury Claims Against Purdue Professor and University Under the Indiana Tort Claims Act

The Indiana Court of Appeals recently addressed how the Indiana Tort Claims Act’s notice requirement applies when an injured person does not learn until well into litigation that the person who caused her injuries was a government employee acting within the scope of his employment. In Janowiak v. Sandage, Hannah Janowiak (“Janowiak”) was struck by a vehicle driven by Kenneth Sandhage as she walked in a crosswalk on the IUPUI campus in Indianapolis on March 9, 2022. Sandhage, a Purdue University professor from West Lafayette, had spent the day on the IUPUI campus and was leaving to drive home when the collision occurred. The responding campus police officer’s crash report listed Sandhage as a “visitor.”

Janowiak retained counsel within a month of the crash, and her attorney corresponded with Sandhage’s personal automobile insurer, Erie Insurance. In October 2023, nineteen months after the collision, Janowiak sued Sandhage individually for negligence. After Sandhage responded to written discovery in January 2024, Janowiak learned he had been on campus that day in his capacity as a Purdue employee. She amended her complaint in February 2024 to add The Trustees of Purdue University (“Purdue”) as a defendant, alleging Purdue was vicariously liable because Sandhage was acting within the scope of his employment. Sandhage amended his answer to admit that allegation. Both Sandhage and Purdue then moved to dismiss under Indiana Trial Rule 12(B)(6), arguing the Indiana Tort Claims Act (“ITCA”) barred Janowiak’s claims. Janowiak did not provide Purdue with formal tort claim notice until April 2024, more than two years after the collision. The trial court granted both motions to dismiss, and Janowiak appealed.

The Court of Appeals first addressed the claim against Sandhage personally. Under Indiana Code section 34-13-3-5(b) and Bushong v. Williamson, 790 N.E.2d 467, 471 (Ind. 2003), a plaintiff generally may not maintain an action against a governmental employee personally when the employee was acting within the scope of his employment. Section 34-13-3-5(c) permits an individual-capacity claim only if the plaintiff alleges that the employee’s conduct was criminal, clearly outside the scope of employment, malicious, willful and wanton, or calculated to benefit the employee personally. Because Janowiak’s own amended complaint alleged, and Sandhage admitted, that he was acting within the scope of his Purdue employment at the time of the collision, and because none of the statutory exceptions applied, the Court held the trial court properly dismissed the claim against Sandhage under Rule 12(B)(6).

As to Purdue, which the parties agreed qualifies as a “political subdivision” under the ITCA because it is a state educational institution, Indiana Code section 34-13-3-8(a) requires a claimant to provide notice of a tort claim within 180 days after the loss occurs. Janowiak argued she substantially complied with the notice requirement because she gave it within 180 days of learning, through discovery, that Sandhage was a Purdue employee. The Court rejected that argument, explaining that the operative question is when the claimant knew, or in the exercise of ordinary diligence could have discovered, that she had sustained a loss resulting from tortious conduct and not when she later discovered that the tortfeasor was acting within the scope of employment for a governmental entity. Because Janowiak knew she had sustained a loss from the collision in March 2022, her notice was due in the fall of 2022 and the April 2024 notice came too late. The Court also rejected Janowiak’s argument that her counsel’s correspondence with Erie constituted substantial compliance. Erie was Sandhage’s personal automobile insurer, not Purdue’s agent, and the Court found no statutory or other basis for treating notice to Erie as notice to Purdue.

The trial court had granted both motions to dismiss under Rule 12(B)(6) alone, without considering any evidence beyond the complaint. On appeal, the Court of Appeals treated Purdue’s motion differently. Because resolving Janowiak’s equitable estoppel argument required consideration of matters outside the pleadings, including the responding officer’s crash report and deposition testimony, the Court converted Purdue’s motion to one for summary judgment and reviewed the estoppel issue under that standard, even though the trial court itself had not done so. The claim against Sandhage required no such conversion, since it turned solely on the allegations of Janowiak’s own complaint.

Janowiak’s estoppel argument against Purdue centered on the crash report’s description of Sandhage as a “visitor,” which she contended concealed his true relationship to Purdue. The Court found City of Columbus v. Londeree, 145 N.E.3d 827 (Ind. Ct. App. 2020), instructive. There, a plaintiff who mistakenly pursued the wrong party’s insurer past the ITCA notice deadline could not estop the governmental entity, because after an initial, arguably misleading phone call, the entity did nothing further to induce her belief that formal notice was unnecessary. The Court distinguished Schoettmer and Madison Consolidated Schools v. Thurston, 135 N.E.3d 926 (Ind. Ct. App. 2019), where agents of governmental entities engaged in ongoing settlement discussions and encouraged or required the claimants to wait until medical treatment was complete, thereby supporting a reasonable belief that formal ITCA notice was unnecessary. Because neither Purdue nor Sandhage thereafter engaged in conduct that induced Janowiak to believe formal ITCA notice was unnecessary, the Court held Purdue was entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of Janowiak’s claim against Sandhage and its entry of judgment in favor of Purdue. You can read the full opinion here.

Cases like this one illustrate how quickly the ITCA’s 180-day notice period can expire and why the potential involvement of a governmental entity or employee must be investigated immediately after an injury. As Janowiak demonstrates, the notice period may begin running before an injured person knows that the individual who caused the injury was acting on behalf of a governmental entity.