Opinion ID: 563789
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alternative Bases for Dismissal.

Text: 41 Citing our holdings in such cases as Fashion House, Inc. v. K Mart Corp., 892 F.2d 1076 (1st Cir.1989), and Damiani v. Rhode Island Hosp., 704 F.2d 12 (1st Cir.1983), the appellees argue that our review of the dismissal's appropriateness should focus not on a few discrete events, but rather on the plaintiffs' overall dilatory pattern of conduct and alleged abuses of the discovery process. We need not tarry in these precincts. Had the defendants taken the first step and secured a Rule 37(a) order or its equivalent, then the totality of the plaintiffs' conduct would justifiably weigh in the balance when the court selected a sanction for an ensuing violation of that order. Indeed, the cases cited by the appellees stand for this very proposition; in each of them, a specific discovery order was in effect and was thereafter violated. See, e.g., Fashion House, 892 F.2d at 1080 (order compelling responsive answers to interrogatories); Damiani, 704 F.2d at 13 (orders compelling answers to interrogatories and document production). Having found such a violation, we then looked to the rest of the record and considered the overall behavior of the guilty party to determine whether the particular sanction imposed by the lower court was just. See Fashion House, 892 F.2d at 1081-82 (preclusory order); Damiani, 704 F.2d at 16 (dismissal); see also Spiller v. U.S.V. Laboratories, Inc., 842 F.2d 535, 537 (1st Cir.1988) (plaintiff's history of foot-dragging important in upholding Rule 37(b)(2) dismissal). These holdings are fully consistent with the proposition that an order must be in effect, and then violated, before the gears of Rule 37(b)(2) can be engaged. 42 While one appellee, Magna, concedes that Rules 11 and 16(f) cannot be used to shore up the dismissal order in this case, the other appellee, Welch, asserts that plaintiffs' violations of those rules justified the dismissal. The district court, however, wrote that resort to other rules, as a source of authority to dismiss, was needless, choosing to impose[ ] the sanction of dismissal under Rule 37(b)(2). RWI I, 129 F.R.D. at 29. Thus, whatever the substantive merit of Welch's claims, we decline to address them, since the district court's order made it clear that Rule 37(b)(2) constituted the sole foundation on which the sanction of dismissal rested. 10 43 Welch also chants a paean to the district court's inherent powers. It is beyond question that a district court has inherent power to manage its affairs, including the ability to do whatever is reasonably necessary to deter abuse of the judicial process. Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1119 (1st Cir.1989) (citation omitted). This innate power includes the authority to dismiss an action where a party's conduct egregiously abuses that process. See id.; see also Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 111 S.Ct. 2123, 2131-2138, 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991) (discussing federal court's inherent power to impose sanctions for litigation abuses in, inter alia, diversity cases). But here, the district court did not act under its inherent powers; to the contrary, the court was explicit in basing the sanction of dismissal on Rule 37(b)(2). Under such circumstances, we refuse to debate the entirely hypothetical question of whether the action might lawfully have been dismissed in the exercise of the court's inherent powers.