Court Opinion

ID: 9848753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:26:46.932793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:43.864205
License: Public Domain

Judge Phillips
concurring in part; dissenting in part.
Since his defiant refusal to answer questions properly put to him earlier in the proceeding unnecessarily burdened and extended the discovery process, the order requiring defendant to pay the charges of plaintiffs’ attorneys is justified and I, too, vote to affirm that ruling. But the order striking defendant’s defenses was not justified in my opinion and I dissent from the majority decision affirming it.
First, I do not agree that the defendant failed to obey an order of court as Rule 37(b) requires for sanctions to be imposed. The order involved directed defendant to answer the question concerning the woman’s name, and he answered it by saying he did not know. Second, the dismissal of defendant’s defense or case, the most drastic sanction that can be imposed in civil litigation, is disproportionate to defendant’s offense, even if it should be conceded that he does know her name and thus did not properly answer the question when he said that he did not know the name of the woman he claims to have visited shortly before the collision occurred. The name of the woman referred to, if she exists, is not vital to plaintiffs’ case; the evidence of defendant’s neglect and lack of veracity is overwhelming and any evidence that she might have is collateral to the case and of little or no importance. Third, the evidence does not establish, at least in a clear and convincing way, that defendant is now lying and that his failure to name the woman is wilful. It seems much more likely to me that defendant’s lie was when he first claimed that there *363was a woman; and that his initial defiance was the result of his bellicose and contumacious nature, rather than an effort to conceal important information. Finally, I do not believe that our law authorizes a trial judge to throw out a party’s claim or defense on the grounds that the party’s answer to a court directed question is false unless it is almost indisputable and irresistibly clear that it is false. In this case, as I read the evidence, defendant earlier implied by his braggadocio refusal to give the woman’s name that he knew it; while later under oath he stated directly and positively that he did not know her name. Under the circumstances I do not believe that anyone could be convinced which answer was true and which was false. That the evidence may support a finding that the answer is false is not enough, in my opinion, to justify a trial judge dismissing a party’s claims or defenses. To undo a paper writing, evidence that is clear, cogent and convincing to a jury is required; in my opinion the standard of proof for a trial judge undoing a party’s lawsuit or defense should be at least that high.