Title: Gooder v. Roth

State: wyoming

Issuer: Wyoming Supreme Court

Document:

Gooder v. Roth1990 WY 23788 P.2d 611Case Number: 89-124Decided: 03/12/1990Supreme Court of Wyoming
RONALD GOODER, 
INDIVIDUALLY, BRENT GOODER, INDIVIDUALLY, AND INSTACARE CENTER OF JACKSON, INC., 
A WYOMING CORPORATION, 

PETITIONERS,

v.

ARLENE ROTH, INDIVIDUALLY 
AND ARLENE ROTH AS NEXT FRIEND OF MARK ROTH AND LORI ROTH, 

RESPONDENTS.

John I. Henley 
(argued), and Richard Kraemer of Vlastos, Brooks & Henley, P.C., Casper, 
for petitioners.

Robert W. Horn, 
P.C., Jackson, for respondents.

Before 
THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY and GOLDEN, JJ., and HARTMAN, District 
Judge.

HARTMAN, District 
Judge.

[¶1]      This cause is 
before the court upon a writ of certiorari. Petitioners, the defendants in a 
medical malpractice action, challenge an order of the district court granting 
respondents a partial judgment in that suit on the issue of liability. They 
contend that the district court's issuance of that order, as a sanction for 
petitioners' alleged failure to answer an interrogatory, constituted an abuse of 
discretion. Inasmuch as we agree with that contention, it is unnecessary to 
consider, at this time, any of the additional issues raised by 
petitioners.

[¶2]      We 
reverse.

[¶3]      This case 
commenced on October 27, 1988, when respondents filed their complaint and served 
petitioners with a number of interrogatories. Among those interrogatories was 
the following:

     INTERROGATORY NO. 18. 
Identify all expert witnesses you intend to call at trial of [sic] consult with 
prior to trial.

Petitioners' 
response, mailed December 21, 1988, included this answer to Interrogatory No. 
18:

     ANSWER: A decision of which 
experts to be called at trial has not been made, but will be provided as 
mandated by the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure and applicable Court Orders. 
The question is objected to as being vague and perhaps seeking information not 
discoverable.

[¶4]      On March 10, 
1989, respondents filed a motion to compel, again requesting that petitioners 
name any experts to be called at trial. Although a request for hearing was filed 
with that motion, the record is devoid of any evidence that such a hearing was 
held. The next document in the record is the district court's order of March 28, 
1989, requiring that petitioners answer Interrogatory No. 18 within 15 days. On 
April 10, 1989, in compliance with that order, petitioners' supplemental 
response named two individual petitioners as potential expert witnesses and, in 
addition, stated: 

     These defendants 
anticipate that a settlement conference will shortly be conducted, and in the 
event the settlement conference is not successful, they may list additional 
expert witnesses to testify on their behalf.

Respondents then 
filed a second motion to compel, accompanied by a request for hearing, on May 
16, 1989. Despite the record's silence, once again, as to any hearing being 
held, the district court, on May 22, 1989, entered judgment against petitioners 
on the issue of liability for their failure to answer Interrogatory No. 
18.

[¶5]      Discovery plays a 
pivotal role in civil litigation. It affords the parties the means to determine 
the strengths and weaknesses of each other's case. Thus, it enables counsel to 
adequately prepare for trial and, just as significantly, it aids in settlement 
of cases. As all counsel and courts are aware, however, the discovery process 
also provides opportunities for abusive and oppressive litigation tactics. 
Interrogatories present a particularly fertile field for such abuses, by both 
the proponent and the party to whom they are directed.

[¶6]      On the one hand, 
even with the limitations placed on them by the Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure 
and our Uniform Rules for the District Courts, interrogatories may be designed 
in part, through their sheer number and complexity, or through the broad scope 
of information sought, to overburden the answering party and divert him from 
more productive endeavors. Similarly, proponents often seek to place additional 
pressures on defendants by submitting interrogatories shortly after filing a 
complaint. In such cases, relief from abusive and burdensome discovery 
techniques may be had by way of the trial court's power to rule on objections to 
improper discovery requests and its power to grant extensions of time and 
fashion protective orders.

[¶7]      On the other 
hand, parties receiving interrogatories have also been known to abuse the 
discovery process through a variety of stalling tactics. Ranking among the most 
common of these are such measures as the entry of frivolous objections or 
unwarranted requests for protective orders, the submission of incomplete or 
evasive answers, and even wholesale refusals to comply with discovery requests. 
Where a proponent of interrogatories, such as respondents in the present case, 
suspects the other party of such dilatory tactics, W.R.C.P. 37 permits relief in 
the form of a motion to compel compliance with the discovery request. If, as was 
alleged of petitioners in the present case, a party disobeys an order granting 
such a motion and compelling compliance, Rule 37 also empowers the district 
court to impose a variety of sanctions for that disobedience. The most severe of 
these sanctions, of course, is a default judgment against the offending 
party.

[¶8]      With respect to 
the availability of this sanction we have observed:

Rule 37(d), W.R.C.P., is 
explicit in permitting the entry of default judgment against one who fails to 
file answers to interrogatories or to excuse such failure.

Zweifel v. State 
ex rel. Brimmer, 517 P.2d 493, 498-99 (Wyo. 1974). Although we have, thus, 
recognized the propriety of default judgments in proper cases, they are not 
favored; we prefer that cases be tried on their merits. Spitzer v. Spitzer, 777 P.2d 587, 591 (Wyo. 1989); Estate of Mora, 611 P.2d 842, 849 (Wyo. 1980). 
However, we also recognize that the district court must generally be afforded 
broad discretion, both in the mechanisms adopted to control discovery and in its 
selection of appropriate sanctions for violations of its discovery orders. Such 
discretion extends to the use of default judgments. Spitzer, 777 P.2d  at 591; 
Farrell v. Hursh Agency, Inc., 713 P.2d 1174, 1180 (Wyo. 1986). Accordingly, we 
will not require the district court to resort to lesser sanctions, except where 
a default judgment would be an abuse of discretion. Id. Consistent with our view 
that the primary consideration in investigating an alleged abuse of discretion 
is whether the court could have reasonably concluded as it did, Inskeep v. 
Inskeep, 752 P.2d 434, 436 (Wyo. 1988), we have observed that Rule 37 sanctions 
cannot be imposed for failing to produce something a party does not have and 
which is unavailable to him. Farrell, 713 P.2d  at 1180.

[¶9]      In Spitzer, a 
divorce case, the wife sought the production of certain documents material to 
the nature and worth of the parties' marital property - initially by a request 
for production, and again in conjunction with a notice of deposition served on 
her husband. Her spouse neither responded to those requests nor appeared for 
deposition. The district court, therefore, ordered him to produce the documents 
and warned that his failure to do so would result in a default judgment in his 
wife's favor. Although we held that the court could make no property division 
without affording the parties an opportunity for a hearing, we otherwise upheld 
the court's decision to sanction, through default judgment, the husband's 
subsequent failure to produce the documents. We similarly upheld resort to that 
sanction in Farrell. In that case, the district court had ordered a party to 
produce a number of his past income tax returns. During the ten months following 
that order, the party produced only a portion of those returns despite two 
subsequent motions to compel and two motions seeking sanctions for his 
recalcitrance. The district court then issued its second order compelling 
production of the requested returns, warning of its intent to enter a default 
judgment as a sanction for noncompliance.

[¶10]   Spitzer and Farrell presented us 
with litigants who did not deny the existence of, or their access to, the 
requested information. Yet, they repeatedly refused to cooperate and were 
purposefully dilatory. Such elements are absent from the present case. 
Petitioners here initially answered Interrogatory No. 18 by informing 
respondents that, while they had not as yet made a decision with respect to 
which experts they would call at trial, they recognized their duty under the 
Wyoming Rules of Civil Procedure to inform respondents of that decision, once 
made. That answer, submitted a scant six weeks after the filing of respondents' 
complaint, does not suggest any evasiveness or stalling by petitioners. This is 
not to say that, when a supplementation of that response was not forthcoming 
some three months later, respondents were unjustified in filing their motion to 
compel. However, petitioners complied with the district court's subsequent 
discovery order. They preliminarily designated two experts to be called at 
trial, informed the court of their expectation of a settlement conference, and 
indicated that, should settlement efforts fail, they would have to reevaluate 
their needs for additional experts. Once again, they expressed their willingness 
to keep respondents informed of such decisions. Hardly six weeks later, 
following a second motion to compel, the district court granted respondents a 
default judgment on the issue of liability due to petitioners' asserted failure 
to answer the interrogatory.

[¶11]   There is simply no reasonable 
ground in the record for such a conclusion. Petitioners' answer may not have 
been what opposing counsel was seeking - that is, some medical expert who could 
testify as to reasonable standards of care. However, an answer was submitted, 
and it was sufficient to apprise counsel of petitioners' most recent decision as 
to who would testify. Respondents were not deprived of the opportunity to depose 
those witnesses in advance of trial and, thereby, prepare to meet their 
testimony. One might speculate that petitioners were dishonest in their 
response; that they, in fact, intended to employ additional experts but chose to 
withhold their names solely to disadvantage respondents. However, such 
speculation finds no support in the record. Accordingly, it cannot reasonably 
serve as a ground for the district court's decision. Absent evidence of such 
unfair tactics at the time of respondents' motion to compel, proof of 
petitioners' deception must await either trial or some eleventh hour attempt by 
petitioners to introduce additional experts. Should it then appear the identity 
of a proffered expert was not disclosed in sufficient time for opposing counsel 
to meet his testimony, adequate remedies exist under W.R.C.P. 37 to keep that 
witness from testifying. See Carter v. Moog Automotive, Inc., 126 F.R.D. 557 
(E.D.Mo. 1989). 

[¶12]   We recognize that, if litigation is 
to proceed to resolution in a fair and orderly fashion, trial courts must be 
able to control the discovery process. To that end, W.R.C.P. 37 has made a wide 
range of sanctions available to the courts and has granted the courts 
considerable discretion to mete out those sanctions to parties who would impede 
that process. However, a trial court cannot be permitted to exercise its options 
in an arbitrary or unreasonable manner. While we are generally hesitant to 
interfere with a trial court's choice of a particular sanction, we cannot uphold 
the use of such a harsh remedy as a default judgment where, as in the present 
case, it appears that no sanction can be reasonably justified. The record shows 
that, following each discovery request or order compelling discovery, 
petitioners updated their answer to Interrogatory No. 18. They cannot be 
sanctioned for complying with discovery.

[¶13]   Had the court, in this case, set a 
deadline for the selection of expert witnesses, the result may have been 
different. Such could have been accomplished through a scheduling conference, 
preliminarily setting a trial date and cut-off dates for various phases of 
discovery. Through such means, the parties would be afforded some input 
regarding the time needed to work on discovery, and the court would be provided 
with a valuable tool for controlling discovery. Had the court required the 
parties to select their experts by a given date, it could reasonably expect them 
to name those experts within that deadline. Without such limitations, however, 
petitioners could only be expected to name the experts they had chosen at the 
time of the order. Although the court could not properly sanction petitioners 
for failing to provide information they did not have, it would be justified in 
enforcing its scheduling order by limiting petitioners' use of expert witnesses 
to those named by the cut-off date. Moreover, if petitioners' defense required 
expert testimony and they, nevertheless, failed to designate any expert 
witnesses by that deadline, the court would unquestionably be justified in 
entering a default judgment against them. Such a scheduling order is not present 
in this case, however, and we decline to read the trial court's order compelling 
petitioners to answer Interrogatory No. 18 as setting a deadline for the 
selection of expert witnesses.

[¶14]   Because the record in this case 
offers no support for the district court's conclusion that petitioners disobeyed 
its discovery orders, it was unreasonable and an abuse of the court's discretion 
to sanction such alleged disobedience by way of a default judgment. We reverse 
and remand.