Opinion ID: 1388652
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Documents and Discovery Orders Related to Chris Walls

Text: Plaintiffs filed the present action in July 2005. In their Rule 26(a)(1) disclosures, they designated Walls as a person with knowledge of their claims. In early 2006, Plaintiffs produced a privilege log to Defendants referring to fifty-eight purportedly privileged documents Walls reviewed and/or generated. Defendants subpoenaed Walls, and in April 2006, Plaintiffs objected, claiming Walls was Plaintiffs' employee and expert. Plaintiffs then failed to produce Walls for a fact deposition. Defendants moved to compel separate depositions of Walls as a fact witness and as an expert witness, and the district court granted the motion. Notwithstanding the district court's grant of this motion, Defendants failed to exercise their authority to take an expert-witness deposition of Walls. Walls's fact-witness deposition took place in May 2006. In the deposition, Walls stated that all services he provided to Plaintiffs were through his own consulting firm, TQM; TQM billed Plaintiffs for Wall's services on TQM letterhead; and TQM received $300 per hour from Plaintiffs for Walls' services. Walls never received a W2 form from Plaintiffs. Nevertheless, Walls stated that he considered himself Plaintiffs' employee. Defendants agree that, since 2005, Walls has spent 98 percent of his time assisting Plaintiffs with their claims that the MSO Model was flawed and that Shell was not properly calculating rent and expense payments. Counsel for Defendants, in fact, characterize Walls as an important fact witness in this case, and he's a management member of the plaintiff organization who probably is appearing to be one of the central figures. In the course of the fact-witness deposition, Walls referred to one specific document that he created and used in a presentation to Plaintiffs' former counsel. The document was an attempt by Walls to describe Plaintiffs' claims and arguments for the purpose of litigation. Defendants subsequently demanded production of this one document. Plaintiffs refused, and Defendants sought an order from the district court directing Plaintiffs to disclose this one document. The district court entered a first discovery order on June 16, 2006, that stated, as relevant for the purpose of this appeal, For each of Plaintiffs' experts, Plaintiffs are ordered to produce the information considered by and/or relied upon in forming that expert's opinion. Plaintiffs continued to refuse to disclose the document, claiming that it was a document generated by Walls rather than a document considered or relied upon by Walls in forming his opinion. Defendants again sought an order from the district court, and on July 13, 2006, the court entered a second discovery order that stated, Plaintiffs are ordered to produce any reports or analysis produced [created] by Chris Walls from February 5, 2005, as referred to by Chris Walls in his deposition. Plaintiffs continued to refuse to give the document to Defendants because, according to Plaintiffs, Walls had created the document at issue prior to February 5, 2005. In addition, Plaintiffs asserted the document was protected by attorneyclient privilege, and they claimed the district court had not addressed Plaintiffs' claims of privilege. Defendants do not seriously dispute this assertion as they admit the district court, at most, had only implicitly ruled against privilege prior to August 2006. Defendants again sought an order from the district court, and on August 17, 2006, the court entered a third discovery order, stating, Plaintiffs are ordered to produce the document created by Mr. Walls currently being withheld on grounds of privilege. This Court finds that any privilege was destroyed due to Mr. Walls' reliance on said document. Plaintiffs claim that in late August 2006, they produced the one document described in the third discovery order. Defendants claim Plaintiffs did not produce the document, but rather, produced a different document. Defendants subsequently asked Plaintiffs for all fifty-eight documents from the privilege log. Plaintiffs refused, and on September 7, 2006, Defendants emailed a letter to the court asking the court to order Plaintiffs to produce all fifty-eight of the documents. The following day, the court issued an order that stated, in part: Plaintiffs are ordered to produce any and all document or analysis developed by Chris Walls relating to this litigation, regardless of whether the document is claimed as privileged or if Chris Walls relied upon said document. The documents must be produced by noon on Monday September 11, 2007[sic]. If this documents are not produced, Plaintiffs will not be permitted to present the testimony of Mr. Walls at trial. On its face, this fourth discovery order was broader in scope than the preceding orders. On September 11, Plaintiffs petitioned our court for a Writ of Mandamus seeking to avoid production under a claim of privilege. In a responsive filing, Defendants clarified that they sought merely data or other information considered by Chris Walls in forming his opinions. We denied the petition on September 26, 2006. Shortly thereafter, Plaintiffs produced to the district court for in camera review documents they considered to be privileged documents related to Chris Walls without limitation to whether the documents were related to Walls's expert opinion. They also produced a different, more limited body of documents directly to Defendants. Plaintiffs filed a motion for in camera review, and Defendants filed a motion for sanctions. Defendants alleged in their motion that the documents Plaintiffs produced directly to Defendants did not contain the fifty-eight documents from the March 2006 privilege log and that the documents contained Bates labels different from those referenced on the March 2006 privilege log. The court did not rule on the motion for in camera review. Rather, it scheduled a hearing for December 15, 2006, to address the motion for in camera review and the issue of sanctions. We discuss the December 15, 2006 hearing below. After the hearing, but before the court entered its written order of dismissal, Plaintiffs provided a table that cross-referenced the new and old Bates labels. [1]