Opinion ID: 4554815
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Initial and Pretrial Disclosures

Text: Four months after BNSF answered Morris’s amended complaint and near the beginning of discovery, the company made its initial disclosures under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(1). By its terms, the Rule required BNSF to supply Morris with the names and contact information of people “likely to have discoverable information” related to his claims. FED. R. CIV. P. 26(a)(1). The Rule makes plain that these initial disclosures are just that—“initial”—and envisions they may (and often do) prove incomplete, for parties regularly come across additional people with discoverable information as well as documents containing information that may be used to support their claims or defenses. Rule 26 addresses this reality by imposing a duty to correct or supplement in a timely manner “if the party learns that in some material respect the disclosure or response is incomplete or incorrect.” See FED. R. CIV. P. 26(e)(1)(A). 20 Nos. 19-2808 & 19-2913 Adherence to the duty to supplement takes on practical importance in a case like this, where many BNSF employees play a role in the facts, substantial document productions occur, and the parties have sharply competing views about what information is pertinent to claims and defenses. In this way, supplemental disclosures help to separate wheat from chaﬀ and bring focus to facts. And it matters to someone in Morris’s shoes that BNSF attends diligently to making timely supplemental disclosures: the whole point of introducing the discovery mechanisms listed in Rule 26 was to ensure that trials would no longer be “carried on in the dark.” Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 501 (1947). Here BNSF waited to supplement its disclosures until January 2019, following the close of a protracted discovery period and less than a month before trial. It was then that the company, for the ﬁrst time, disclosed to Morris three employees with pertinent information—Andrea Smith, Hannah Stadheim, and Jason Jenkins. BNSF also updated its disclosure related to Robert Della-Pietra. In its initial disclosure, the company identiﬁed Della-Pietra as a source of information about Morris’s work history. In its supplemental disclosure, BNSF informed Morris that Della-Pietra also had information regarding other incidents of employee discipline. Morris argued that the new information had come way too late. He moved to exclude Stadheim, Smith, and Jenkins from testifying and to limit Della-Pietra to the topics outlined in BNSF’s initial disclosure. See FED. R. CIV. P. 37(c)(1) (providing that if a party fails to disclose required information, “the party is not allowed to use that information or witness . . . unless the failure was substantially justiﬁed or is harmless”). BNSF countered that Morris knew about Smith, Stadheim, Nos. 19-2808 & 19-2913 21 and Jenkins from both his work at the company and documents the company produced earlier in discovery. The district court granted Morris’s motion and excluded the witnesses from testifying at trial. The court rejected BNSF’s contention that the newly-disclosed witnesses were actually not new (because they had been identiﬁed in emails and other documents), explaining that “[i]t’s one thing to know that a person’s name is out there [but] it’s another thing to know that the other side is intending to call him as a witness. That’s why we have Rule 26(a) disclosures.” From there the district judge aﬀorded the parties the option of continuing the trial to allow Morris time to depose Smith, Stadheim, and Jenkins and to seek more information from Della-Pietra. When Morris’s counsel declined the invitation, the court stood by its initial position and excluded the witnesses.