Opinion ID: 1709406
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Exclusion of Labor-Hour Reports

Text: ¶ 36. During discovery, Edwards's estate requested all daily time sheets that documented the day-to-day staffing levels at Greenwood Health and filed a motion to compel production after the daily time sheets were not produced. Mariner maintained that the daily time sheets had not been preserved, but provided weekly summaries of staffing levels that had been produced in the normal course of business. Two days before trial, Mariner delivered more than 10,000 pages of records to defense counsel, including the daily time sheets in question. Defense counsel maintained that the failure to timely produce the time sheets was an inadvertent error. Edwards's estate moved to exclude the weekly labor-hour summaries, arguing that there was not enough time to verify their accuracy against the daily time sheets. The trial judge considered the admissibility of the labor-hour reports on the second day of trial. He questioned whether a continuance could remedy the discovery violation, but ultimately found that the failure to produce the daily time sheets materially prejudiced Edwards's estate, and he therefore excluded them. He further determined that the labor-hour reports had to be excluded because they could not be verified against the daily time sheets. ¶ 37. The appropriateness of discovery sanctions, like other evidentiary rulings, rests within the sound discretion of the trial court, and will be reversed only if that discretion is abused. M & M Pipe & Pressure Vessel Fabricators, Inc. v. Roberts, 531 So.2d 615, 620 (Miss.1988). We have articulated the procedure for addressing a discovery violation: Under our rules of civil procedure, failure to make or cooperate in discovery should first be resolved by making a motion in the proper court requesting an order compelling such discovery. The remedy for failing to comply with the discovery requests when the trial court grants an order to compel falls under M.R.C.P. 37(a)(4) in the form of awarding the moving party the expenses for such motion. After such an order to compel has been granted under M.R.C.P. 37(a)(2), and the party ordered to answer fails to respond, then the remedy may be sanctions in accordance with M.R.C.P. 37(b). Caracci v. Int'l Paper Co., 699 So.2d 546, 557 (Miss.1997) (internal citations omitted). One possible sanction is issuing an order prohibiting [the offending party] from introducing designated matters in evidence. M.R.C.P. 37(b)(2)(B). However, the exclusion of evidence is a last resort. McCollum v. Franklin, 608 So.2d 692, 694 (Miss. 1992). Every reasonable alternative means of assuring the elimination of any prejudice to the moving party and a proper sanction against the offending party should be explored before ordering exclusion. Id. ¶ 38. The exclusion of the labor-hour reports was well within the discretion of the trial court. The trial judge considered whether a continuance to review the daily time sheets would cure the prejudice to Edwards's estate, determined that a continuance would push the trial back almost a year, and ruled that the only means of preventing prejudice was to exclude the time sheets. The labor-hour reports were compiled from the daily time sheets, but provided only averages of the work hours provided to residents each week, and did not preclude the possibility that the nursing home was understaffed on a given day. The trial judge therefore ruled that the admission of the labor-hour reports was inappropriate once the daily time sheets had been excluded. Mariner's reliance on Ferguson v. Snell, 905 So.2d 516 (Miss. 2004), is misplaced. The summary reports in Ferguson were created by a computer automatically generating information. Id. at 520. In that case, it was unnecessary to call as witnesses the individuals who input the information into the computer system, in part because there was no real question whether the information produced differed from the information entered into the system. Id. In the present case, by contrast, there was significant contention whether the labor-hour reports accurately depicted the level of care at Greenwood Health, since the reports presented averages that did not preclude short-staffing on a given day. Given the importance of the issue of staffing at trial, and in light of the seriousness of Mariner's discovery violation to the case, the trial court did not err in excluding the labor-hour reports from evidence.