Opinion ID: 1103313
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: did the trial court commit error by failing to consider the affidavit of the plaintiffs' expert due to untimeliness en route to a grant of summary judgment in favor of the medical defendants.

Text: ¶ 10. Discovery responses are to be supplemented seasonably pursuant to Rule 26(f) of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure. It has been held that [s]easonably does not mean several months later. It means immediately. West v. Sanders Clinic for Women, P.A., 661 So.2d 714, 721 (Miss.1995). Additionally, seasonableness must be determined on a case by case basis looking at the totality of the circumstances surrounding the supplemental information the offering party seeks to admit. Blanton v. Board of Supervisors, 720 So.2d 190, 195 (Miss.1998). ¶ 11. Lois Brown died in 1998, and this action was filed in 1999. The trial court's scheduling order provided that plaintiffs were to designate experts by December 31, 2000. The motions for summary judgment were filed in January 2001. Plaintiffs did not designate Dr. McNair as a witness until February 5, 2001, and did not file his affidavit until February 28, 2001. Applying the proper standard, the trial court found as follows: This Court is of the opinion that the plaintiff has just failed to show any excusable neglect for why the designation of experts was not filed timely. Therefore, the motion for extension of time to designate expert witnesses is denied. The motion to strike designation of experts is granted. Because there is [sic] no expert witnesses now before this Court, the motion for summary judgment filed by each of the defendants is granted. ¶ 12. The plaintiffs rely on Thompson v. Patino, 784 So.2d 220 (Miss.2001) wherein we held that the striking of an expert designation was considered to be too harsh a sanction for a discovery violation. That decision is clearly limited to the facts of that case and does not stand for the proposition that a trial court may never strike an expert affidavit in response to a discovery violation. Id. at 224. Further, in Thompson, the plaintiffs had designated their expert in 1994 and were seeking to supplement proposed testimony with a deposition which was taken in 1996. The defendants' motion for summary judgment in that case was not filed until 1997. Although the plaintiffs' expert affidavit was not filed until after the motion for summary judgment was filed, the expert in that case had been timely designated and his deposition had been taken. ¶ 13. In the present case, the expert was not timely designated. Also, the holding in Thompson dealt with the propriety of a particular sanction for the violation of a discovery rule whereas the instant case involves the failure to comply with a trial court's order concerning the time frame for the completion of discovery. Neither Dr. McNair's identity nor his affidavit were made available until after the motion for summary judgment had been filed, notwithstanding the defendants' previously submitted Rule 26(b)(4) interrogatory [Miss. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4)] and the trial court's previously entered agreed scheduling order. The trial judge made a specific finding that the plaintiffs had failed to show any excusable neglect as to why the designation of the expert was not timely filed. This Court has previously held that an action may not be dismissed for a discovery violation if a party is simply unable to comply, but that dismissal may be justified if the violation is the result of willfulness, bad faith, or any fault of the party. Fluor Corp. v. Cook, 551 So.2d 897, 903 (Miss.1989) (emphasis added). ¶ 14. Our trial judges are afforded considerable discretion in managing the pre-trial discovery process in their courts, including the entry of scheduling orders setting out various deadlines to assure orderly pre-trial preparation resulting in timely disposition of the cases. Our trial judges also have a right to expect compliance with their orders, and when parties and/or attorneys fail to adhere to the provisions of these orders, they should be prepared to do so at their own peril. See, e.g., Kilpatrick v. Miss. Baptist Med. Ctr., 461 So.2d 765, 767-68 (Miss.1984) (held that trial court did not abuse discretion in dismissing case due to failure to comply with pre-rules discovery statutes relating to timely designation of expert witnesses); Mallet v. Carter, 803 So.2d 504, 507-08 (Miss.Ct.App.2002) (held that trial court did not abuse discretion in dismissing case for failure to timely designate expert witness within the time allowed by the trial court's scheduling order). The provisions of Miss. R. Civ. P. 37(d)(2) clearly provide that the sanctions for failure to answer Rule 33 interrogatories [Miss. R. Civ. P. 33] are the same as set out in subsections (A), (B), and (C) of Miss. R. Civ. P. 37(b)(2), which provide, inter alia, for sanctions by way of dismissal of a case. In a case wherein we upheld the trial court's refusal to set aside a default judgment, we stated: It may be that people will miss fewer trains if they know the engineer will leave without them rather than delay even a few seconds. Although we are not about to inaugurate a policy of entering irrevocable defaults where no answer has been filed by the thirty-first day, we are equally resolved that people know that the duty to answer must be taken seriously. At some point the train must leave. Guaranty Nat'l Ins. Co. v. Pittman, 501 So.2d 377, 388-89 (Miss.1987). ¶ 15. The sound reasoning in Guaranty National is certainly applicable in the case before us today. As of August 16, 2000, the parties and attorneys knew what was expected of them by the trial court upon its entry of the scheduling order. The parties and the attorneys knew from the express language of the scheduling order that the therein stated deadlines could not be extended by agreement of the parties, but only by permission of the Court upon showing of good cause. Pursuant to the provisions of the scheduling order, the plaintiffs were to designate their expert by December 31, 2000, which came and passed uneventfully without any expert designation by the plaintiffs. Notwithstanding the plaintiffs' failure to timely designate their experts, the defendants dutifully designated their experts in a timely fashionbut the plaintiffs still were not to be heard from by way of their expert designation. It was not until the defendants filed their various motions for summary judgment that the plaintiffs finally designated their medical expert. Additionally, it was not until the hearing on the motions for summary judgment, some sixty-four days after the passage of the plaintiffs' deadline for expert designation, that the plaintiffs for the first time acknowledged that they had failed to meet the court-imposed deadline. This is when the plaintiffs submitted to the trial court a motion for extension of time to designate an expert and also seeking a retroactive order permitting the late expert designation. The trial judge found that the plaintiffs' motion for extension of time was untimely inasmuch as it had been filed over two months after the deadline for designation of expert witnesses had passed and over a month after one or more of the Defendants' Motion[s] for Summary Judgment were filed. Upon the trial court's finding that the plaintiffs had not timely designated an expert in accordance with the provisions of the scheduling order, the trial court then granted summary judgment since the plaintiffs could not make out a prima facie case of medical malpractice without a medical expert. ¶ 16. While the end result in today's case may appear to be harsh, litigants must understand that there is an obligation to timely comply with the orders of our trial courts. As we noted in Guaranty National, the parties must take seriously their duty to comply with court orders. At some point the train must leave. 501 So.2d at 389. That point was reached in today's case on December 31, 2000.