Opinion ID: 1443005
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Exclusion of Witnesses as Discovery Sanction

Text: DeFelice takes issue with the district court's decision to bar the testimony of five witnesses as a discovery sanction under FED.R.CIV.P. 37. The district court took this step because it found that DeFelice failed to disclose the names properly. As Kunz points out, the names were buried within a multitude of other names, such as a police district roll call, with nothing to signal that they had anything useful to add. The district court found that it would place an excessive burden on the plaintiff to require him to sift through every single name turned over in discovery. In fact, DeFelice is caught in a trap here. If the testimony of these witnesses was relevant and useful, then his failure to disclose was prejudicial, and the district court properly exercised its discretion to exclude the testimony as a Rule 37 sanction. On the other hand, the error could only be harmless if the testimony was irrelevant or not usefulwhich would be grounds for excluding it anyway. Either way DeFelice wants to have it, the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the testimony.