Opinion ID: 78179
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Discovery Motions, Hearing, and Sanctions Rulings

Text: In late October 2006, EBG filed a series of discovery-related motions. Specifically, EBG moved the district court to, among other things: (1) exclude Fitel's claim for attorney's fees because of its failure to produce the bills from its current legal counsel; and (2) exclude the testimony of Rafuse and any other expert witness that Fitel might designate because of Fitel's failure to timely produce the Rule 26(a)(2) written expert report. The district court heard argument on EBG's motions on December 15, 2006. [3] EBG first presented its motion to strike Fitel's claim for attorney's fees. Fitel argued that Georgia law did not require it to disclose its ongoing attorney's bills on a regular basis. The court was not persuaded, stating [i]f there was a personal injury case and your client was having ongoing medical bills would you say, well, I'm not going to give you any of the medical expenses because they're ongoing? I mean, what's the difference? Fitel replied that providing its bills would require it to disclose essentially, a blueprint of what the lawyers are doing and who they're talking to and their work product. The court responded that you would have the right to redact from your bills that sort of information.... But to say we're demanding attorney's fees as part of our damages, and we refuse to give you the bills that document what those fees are ... I'm just mystified by that argument. Fitel then argued it had offered to produce a summary of its bills, but EBG rejected this offer and failed to bring this dispute to the court's attention before the close of discovery. After hearing EBG's rebuttal, the court dismissed with prejudice Fitel's claim for attorney fees, finding a complete, willful failure by Fitel to provide its attorney's fee documents: [I]t appears, to me, that there's been just a complete and willful failure to provide the defendants with discovery to which they're entitled. And I'm going to grant the defendant's motion to exclude the plaintiff's claim for attorney's fees under the authority of Rule 37(d) and 37(b)(2)(C). It's notnot appropriate to simply refuse to produce documents that are clearly relevant to a claim then say, well, you accept something less than that and I'll give it to you and then, if you don't accept it, to say, well, we're going to make the judge order us to do it. And if the judge then orders us to do it, well, we'll do it. That's just not the way cases are handled in my court, and it's not the way I'm going to permit cases to be handled in my court. So I grant the motion and dismiss, with prejudice, the plaintiff's claim for attorney's fees. The court next heard argument on EBG's motion to exclude Fitel's legal expert. Fitel argued that Rafuse's expert affidavit, filed with the complaint, complied with Rule 26(a)(2) because the affidavit contained a summary of Rafuse's opinions and the legal conclusions underpinning them, and thus enabled EBG to depose Rafuse during the discovery period. Fitel also pointed out that the delay in producing a formal expert report was caused by EBG's failure to make its EBG attorney witnesses in New York available for depositions earlier in the discovery period. Without their testimony, Fitel claimed, Rafuse could not produce a report any more comprehensive than her affidavit. Finally, Fitel offered, in lieu of sanctions, to make Rafuse available for deposition by EBG at its request. Specifically, Fitel's counsel stated, [B]ecause it is a case dispositive issue, we would ask that the court permit the report to be filled [sic] out of [time] and permit the defendant to take a deposition if the defendant wants to do that. In response, EBG's counsel reiterated that Rafuse's affidavit did not provide sufficient notice of her opinions to excuse non-production of the Rule 26(a)(2) written report, that Rule 26 and Local Rule 26.2(C) require the report to be produced early enough to permit expert depositions to be taken before the discovery period closes, and that a failure to provide information [required by Rule 26(a)(2)] is, by itself, sufficient to warrant sanctions, including [exclusion] of the expert's testimony. After hearing argument, the court granted EBG's motion to exclude Fitel's legal expert, reasoning: Again there, was just a complete failure to comply with the rules and it's not acceptable, to me, for a party to say, well, we didn't comply with the rule because we thought it would be more efficient or better practice to do it our way, rather than the way the rule says you're supposed to do it. It's also not acceptable to me for a party to fail to provide discovery and then say, well, judge, if you decide we did wrong in not complying with the rules, well, we'll do it now. That completely disrupts the orderly disposition of a case like this. For example, if I accepted Mr. Bramlett's suggestion that, well, we'll make the expert available to be deposed, that means discovery's got to be reopened for that deposition. Then Mr. Wedge has got to hire his expert, and the plaintiff has got to depose his expert. And finally, I regret to say, and say after only very careful consideration that, frankly, this appears, to me, to be part of a pattern by the plaintiffs, of stonewalling and delaying discovery. And, for those reasons, I feel that it is my duty to enforce the local rule that says that, if you don't comply, you don't designate your experts sufficiently early in the discovery period, you don't provide the report that allows the other side to take their deposition, the sanction is exclusion. And that's why I'm granting the motion. The court asked EBG's counsel to proceed with his next motion. Fitel's counsel then pointed out that the court's exclusion of Fitel's legal expert was case-dispositive and there was nothing left in the case, stating: Your Honor, if I may, the court's ruling on that motion is, in fact, case dispositive. Under the law if the plaintiff is unable to offer expert testimony on the issue of professional negligence, there is no case left. So if the court wants to proceed with these other motions, that is certainly the court's prerogative. But my suggestion is, in light of the court's ruling, we cannot proceed in this case. And so my thought isand if you want to hear these other motions, that's fine. But we've got to decide whether we this case is going nowhere, based on that ruling; therefore, we'll have to decide whether we need to appeal that or not or dismiss or whatever we're going to do. Frankly, if the court wants to pursue these other motions, that's fine. But there's nothing left of this case in light of that last ruling, and the court could save everybody a lot of time and money by, simply, moving forward. The court asked for comment by EBG's counsel, who replied: My only concern, your honor, is ... I think that the motion we haven't heard yet [the fifth motion, regarding Fitel's alleged willful failure to engage in discovery] is, perhaps, the most illustrative of the stonewalling and the failure to make discovery of anything that we've seen so far today. We got 16,000 electronic documents dumped on us starting four days before the discovery period ended .... Now in our motion for sanctions, one of our prayers for relief we made was dismissal of the complaint based on that conduct. And the only concern I have, at this juncture, is if the plaintiff appeals the ruling of the court with respect to the expert affidavit ... the record would not have, in it, another potential ground for upholding that decision. And I guess theI guess the net effect of all of that would be that, if the plaintiff were successful in an appeal on that ruling, I suppose we could address these remaining motions at that time. There are a lot of messy issues in these remaining motions .... So perhaps, the best course, at this time, would be for us to reserve our rights, with respect to our other outstanding motions, rather than subjecting the court and everybody else to [hearing that motion] .... I would, simply, want to be able to preserve our rights with respect to those motions, your honor. The court asked Fitel's counsel: Do you want to respond in terms of the other motions for sanctions? He replied: Well ... in suggesting ... the case dispositive nature of the last ruling by the court, I offered the proposition that the case should terminate, at this point, based on efficiency. I have no problem with putting something in the order that preserves Mr. Wedge's rights to reassert these motions if you, at any point, feel it's necessary to do that .... [B]ut we're talking about a case that is dead at this point, based on the last ruling, it seems to me. There are other things to do. The court then stated: Well, Mr. Bramlett, I can't tell you how painful it has been for me to do what I did and how painful it was going to be for me and you to go through these next few motions. I appreciate your suggestion. I think it's appropriate. And, based upon the stipulation by the plaintiff that the exclusion of its expert is a case dispositive event, this action is dismissed. On January 5, 2007, the court entered an order of dismissal, which stated, among other things, that: After the Court announced its rulings on the two [motions for sanctions], counsel for Plaintiffs ... suggested that, in lieu of proceeding with the remaining pending discovery motions, the Court simply proceed to dismiss the case. Defense counsel did not object and the Court found this suggestion appropriate. Accordingly, based on [Plaintiff's] stipulation that the Court's ruling on [the expert motion] is case dispositive, the Court dismissed the case with prejudice.