Opinion ID: 719811
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The FAA's Discovery Violation.

Text: 11 The Administrative Law Judge had required exchange of all exhibits fifteen days before trial. The attorney for the FAA did not obtain Desert Airlines' invoice to Sun World until a week before trial, Monday, March 16. A week earlier, she had told Mr. Wagner's lawyer that among the exhibits would be a copy of the invoice, but he did not fully understand what she was talking about, because he did not realize that Desert Airlines had sent an invoice. She told him that she would send it to him immediately as soon as she received it. She had the attorney's fax number. 12 The FAA's lawyer got the invoice in the late afternoon on Monday, March 16. She did not send it to Mr. Wagner's lawyer that afternoon. She was out of the office and did not have it sent Tuesday or Wednesday. She was back in the office Thursday, but did not cause the invoice to go out that day either. Instead, she sent it ordinary mail (not fax) on Friday, March 20. It got to Mr. Wagner's lawyer Monday, the day before the Tuesday hearing. Mr. Wagner objected to its admission as evidence, but the Administrative Law Judge let it in anyway. Mr. Wagner, however, did not seek a continuance to rebut the evidence. Mr. Wagner argues that admitting the invoice was arbitrary and capricious. 13 There appears to have been no good reason why the FAA's attorney could not have subpoenaed the invoice in plenty of time to produce it as required by the deadline in the prehearing order. Nor was there any apparent excuse for not faxing it to Mr. Wagner's lawyer during the week before the hearing, when she had it and he did not. As the case would look to the attorneys the week before the hearing, the invoice would likely be important, because it would prove that the flight had been for a charge, not for free. 14 But as the evidence came out at the hearing, and as the FAA decided the case, the invoice did not matter. We therefore need not decide whether the invoice was wrongly admitted. As we explain below, the outcome was controlled by the customers' ignorance of whether this was a demonstration flight, and its expectation that it would be charged, regardless of whether a charge was actually made. Error in admission of the invoice could not, as this case ultimately was decided, have prejudiced Mr. Wagner, so we need not decide whether there was error. See Janka v. Department of Transportation, 925 F.2d 1147, 1152 (9th Cir.1991). 15