Opinion ID: 474498
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: I.W.'s Failure to Provide Information Relating to Its Damage Claims

Text: 21 As explained above, Aeration claimed at the pretrial conference that I.W. had failed in three respects to provide information relating to its damage claims. Aeration alleged that I.W. had wrongfully concealed the identity of its accounting expert, that it had refused to exchange trial exhibits detailing its damage claims, and that it had not adequately responded to five interrogatories concerning damages. All three contentions were apparently accepted by the district court in ruling to exclude I.W.'s proof of damages. 22 The first two of these allegations are clearly specious. With respect to I.W.'s purported concealment of the identity of its accounting expert, Aeration was simply incorrect in suggesting that I.W. was under an obligation to identify its expert prior to the pretrial conference. Aeration did not ask I.W. to identify its expert witnesses until March 18, when Aeration served its third set of interrogatories on I.W. Because these interrogatories were served by mail, I.W. had 33 days to respond. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(e) and 33(a). This time period was superseded by the requirement of the amended pretrial order that experts be identified by the time of the pretrial conference on April 18. I.W. identified its accounting expert at the pretrial conference and therefore was in full compliance with the pretrial order and the rules of discovery. 23 The allegation that I.W. refused to exchange trial exhibits during the first day of the pretrial conference is also incorrect. As described above, the only reason that the exhibits were not exchanged on April 18 was that Aeration did not have extra copies of its exhibits. Counsel thereupon agreed to exchange exhibits the following day, and on April 19 Aeration received I.W.'s exhibits in accordance with this agreement. See Hearing Transcript, April 19, 1985 at 34-35. Once again, I.W. was in compliance with the pretrial order. 24 Aeration's third claim of factual concealment is more plausible than the first two, but upon closer analysis it too must be rejected as meritless. We fully agree with Aeration's contention that I.W.'s responses to the five interrogatories relating to damages should have been more complete. The question before this court, however, is whether the responses were so inadequate as to warrant exclusion of I.W.'s evidence of damages and, as a necessary consequence of such exclusion, dismissal of I.W.'s complaint. Our review of the pertinent authorities satisfies us that I.W.'s responses were not sufficiently inadequate to justify granting the motion to exclude introduction of any proof of damages or expert witness testimony. As this evidence should not have been excluded, I.W.'s complaint should not have been dismissed. 25 As this court recently observed,  'dismissal is a sanction of last resort to be applied only after less dire alternatives have been explored without success' or would obviously prove futile. Shea v. Donohoe Construction Co., 795 F.2d 1071, 1075 (D.C.Cir.1986), (quoting Trakas v. Quality Brands, Inc., 759 F.2d at 187). Applying this principle, the court in Shea ordered reinstatement of a complaint that had been dismissed because the plaintiff's attorneys failed to appear at three status calls. The court found that neither the defendant nor the orderly administration of justice were sufficiently prejudiced by the dereliction of the plaintiff's attorneys to warrant dismissal of the complaint. Insofar as dismissal was intended to deter similar misconduct in the future, the court stated [w]e look disfavorably upon dismissals as sanctions for attorney misconduct or delay unless the client himself has been made aware of the problem, usually through notice from the trial court. Id. at 1078 (emphasis in the original). Finding no basis for imputing the attorneys' misconduct to the plaintiff, the court ordered reinstatement of the complaint, noting that the District Court should first attempt to sanction the attorney at fault. Id. at 1077. 26 Our decisions involving dismissal as a sanction for the failure of a plaintiff to cooperate in discovery are consistent with Shea. In far more egregious circumstances than those presented in the instant case, this court has reinstated complaints dismissed by the district court for failure of the plaintiff to obey the rules of discovery. For instance, in Jackson v. Washington Monthly Co., 569 F.2d 119 (D.C.Cir.1977), a complaint was reinstated despite the failure of plaintiff's lawyer to obey an explicit court order to report on the progress of settlement negotiations within 30 days. The court emphasized that since only one court order had been disregarded, there was no history of neglect by the plaintiff's lawyer. It was further observed that parties should not ordinarily be penalized for the misconduct of their attorneys. Id. at 123. Similarly, in Butler v. Pearson, 636 F.2d 526 (D.C.Cir.1980), this court ordered reinstatement of a complaint where the plaintiffs failed for almost five months to provide any response to interrogatories. The court noted that under the pretrial order the plaintiffs still had eight days to respond when their complaint was dismissed, though the time to respond under the federal rules had long since passed. In addition, the court observed that the plaintiffs were not technically in violation of any orders of the court. See also Robison v. Transamerica Insurance Co., 368 F.2d 37 (10th Cir.1966) (dismissal of complaint at pretrial conference reversed where plaintiff submitted reasons for his failure to respond to interrogatories and offered at the conference to provide answers). 27 The cases cited by Aeration are readily distinguishable because all involved much more serious abuses of the discovery process than in the present case. For example, dismissal was upheld in National Hockey League v. Metropolitan Hockey Club, Inc., 427 U.S. 639, 642, 96 S.Ct. 2778, 2780, 49 L.Ed.2d 747 (1976), where the trial court found that the plaintiff had acted in flagrant bad faith and callous disregard of the rules by failing to file timely responses to discovery requests, and then eventually filing responses that were grossly inadequate. Likewise, in Weisberg v. Webster, 749 F.2d 864 (D.C.Cir.1984), dismissal was affirmed where the plaintiff ignored two explicit court orders to produce documents. G-K Properties v. Redevelopment Agency of the City of San Jose, 577 F.2d 645 (9th Cir.1978), similarly is distinguishable in that the plaintiffs ignored for more than three months a court order requiring them to produce documents. 28 In contrast to these cases, I.W. was at no time in clear violation of a court order regarding discovery. The court's March 25, 1985 order denying I.W.'s request for a protective order directed I.W. to respond to Aeration's first and second sets of interrogatories, but it did not specifically require a more definite response to the five interrogatories in question. Nor did the court specifically direct I.W. to elaborate on its responses to the five interrogatories at the April 12 status conference where this matter was first brought to the court's attention. In addition to distinguishing the cases cited by Aeration, the fact that I.W. was not in violation of any court orders reflects the failure of Aeration to request, and the failure of the court to take, any steps to obtain more complete interrogatory responses from I.W. before the action was dismissed. At no time was any consideration given to issuing an order to compel discovery under Rule 37(a), nor were any sanctions less severe than dismissal considered. 29 It is also significant that the facts of this case provide no basis for imputing the misconduct of I.W.'s lawyers, such as it was, to I.W. See Shea v. Donohoe Construction Co., at 1078. I.W. was at no time advised of the district court's growing frustration with its lawyers. Indeed, the lawyers themselves were not advised of their tenuous situation by means of a court order requiring them to cooperate more fully in discovery, and the court obviously made no effort to sanction the lawyers before sanctioning I.W. 30 In short, our decisions establish that a plaintiff must be more derelict than was I.W. before dismissal of its complaint is justified. Though I.W.'s lawyers certainly could have been more forthcoming in their responses to Aeration's discovery requests, we do not think that this case presented circumstances warranting the district court's imposition on I.W. of a sanction of last resort. Trakas v. Quality Brands, Inc., 759 F.2d at 187.