Opinion ID: 2170439
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: History of Dilatoriness.

Text: As for the second factor listed in Ward , whether plaintiffs were dilatory, [25] the trial court noted their failure to initiate activity of record in the case and noted that all of their court filings after 2001 were merely responsive to the defendants' discovery requests, rather than affirmative, proactive filings. While we do not hold that a plaintiff must swell the official record with filings in order to prosecute his case, nonetheless, it was permissible for the trial court to consider the fact that for years, plaintiffs had acted responsively, rather than proactively, as demonstrated by the filings of record. The statement of the Court of Appeals that one fails to make a record upon peril of having a case dismissed for lack of prosecution is certainly applicable in terms of administrative dismissals under CR 77.02. But we encourage parties to pursue diligent resolution of their cases by appropriate means, such as conducting discovery in a timely manner under the civil rules or pursuing alternative dispute resolution. And some of these activities may not always be noted in the trial court's record. Certainly, not all of counsel's work in pursuit of resolution of the case makes its way into the official record of a case. So the relevant inquiry in determining whether a case should be dismissed with prejudice under CR 41.02 is whether the party has been diligently pursuing resolution of the case  not necessarily whether the party has recently been filing documents in the trial court record. In other cases with other circumstances, trial courts might still find that a plaintiff was continuing to prosecute its case despite having only responded to defense discovery requests rather than filing its own requests, depending on such factors as the number of defense requests and the thoroughness and speed of the plaintiffs responses to discovery requests. Here, the relatively few discovery requests made and the plaintiffs' pattern of delay in responding to these requests support the trial court's findings of dilatoriness on the part of plaintiffs. Generally, it is entirely proper for a trial court to consider that a plaintiff has only been acting reactively and has shown no inclination to take affirmative steps to advance resolution of the case for an unreasonable period of time as a relevant factor indicating that the plaintiff has not been actively prosecuting the case.