Court Opinion

ID: 9459716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:29:30.262939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:17.951757
License: Public Domain

ALBERT Y. BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
No fault can be found in the majority’s precise and comprehensive exposition of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. However, the Rules are there considered entirely in the abstract. My point is that, in the actualities of this case the District Judge correctly sustained the defendant’s motion for a more definite statement. In holding to the contrary, the decision disregards the overriding and practical aim of the Rules — to simplify pleading and to expedite the cause.
The Secretary pressed in argument that the District Judge should be reversed solely because he granted the defendant’s motion instead of requiring *825the defendant to employ the discovery provisions of the Rules. Quite candidly the Secretary conceded that, although he had the information sought by the Hospital readily at hand, he opposed the motion because he “did not want to have to live with the precedent of putting all of [his] proof in [his] complaint”. Therefore, he insisted that the Hospital go to the expense and effort of time-consuming discovery.
No one questions that discovery is the usual course; that is hornbook. But where this cumbersome procedure can be avoided, I see in it no affront to the Rules. The Rules are not so inflexible as not to tolerate any deviation from some of their steps when to do so will, because of exceptional circumstances, achieve the Rules’ aims — simplicity and expedition — without the merest prejudice to any party. Otherwise, the overall ambition of the Rules is thwarted by the Rules themselves. Moreover, any information given responsively to the motion would not have constituted proof. Apparently this was the District Judge’s construction.
The logic of his stance upon the Secretary’s refusal to obey the Court’s orders in the Hospital’s motion is starkly revealed by recounting the impediments the Secretary interjected into the progress of the suit. Instead of obtaining the information at once or within 10 days, Rule 12(e), without any inconvenience whatsoever to the Secretary, the Hospital is now relegated to the observance of the long stages of discovery, as though they were indispensable to the plaintiff. In lieu of immediate receipt of the desired information, the Hospital must:
1. State in its answer that the Hospital was “without knowledge or information” as to the truth of any averment in the complaint in that category, all of which would have been furnished at once on the Hospital’s motion.
2. Prepare and serve interrogatories, or take depositions, to gain this knowledge or information.
3. Wait 30 days for objections or answers to interrogatories. Rule 33(a).
4. Seek a hearing before the Court on the objections, if any.
5. Await the decision of the Court on the objections.
6. Await the answer by the adversary party to any interrogatory found unobjectionable.
7. Examine all answers to ascertain if they were sufficient.
8. Except to any answer believed insufficient.
9. Seek a hearing before the Court on the exceptions.
10. Await decision thereon.
Pursuit of such prolongation of procedure is costly both in money and in time. It should not be imposed upon a defendant when, as in the special circumstances of this case, the whole of it could have been obviated through the Secretary’s compliance with the Hospital’s motion, which he could do at once, easily and without a shadow of prejudice. The Rules are not so sacrosanct that we dare not apply them practically.
I would affirm.