Court Opinion

ID: 9711784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:39:01.201352+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:07.472767
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE McDADE, dissenting: I do not agree with the majority’s decision regarding discovery in this case and, therefore, respectfully submit a policy-based dissent. Hadley had filed an action in state court raising claims against officials of the Department of Corrections pursuant to 42 U.S.C. section 1983. This was not a prison board hearing on a prisoner’s complaint, but a full-fledged court claim to which all of the litigation rights and obligations established through the supreme court rules and the Code of Civil Procedure (Code), including, but not limited to, the rules concerning discovery, applied. In recent years, all levels of the state courts have wrestled continuously with the responsibilities of the parties in propounding and responding to discovery. The supreme court rules have increasingly emphasized the importance of discovery and the stringency with which the rules should be enforced. I have found nothing in the rules or the Code provisions that indicates that they apply with less force in litigation involving prisoners. What the majority has done in this opinion is to condone the Attorney General’s blatant refusal to comply with legitimate discovery requested by Hadley, paying lip service to the rules by noting their violation and the trial court’s error in failing to compel compliance with the interrogatories but exacting no penalty. It finds errors to have been harmless, determining that the information sought by plaintiff was (1) already known to him, (2) cumulative, or (3) irrelevant because it could not have affected the outcome of his case. In so doing, the majority has assumed and prejudged plaintiffs theory of his case. We can, of course, speculate but we have no knowledge how, or with what persuasiveness, he would have used the information he was seeking. This decision also overlooks the fact that discovery is a means of proving at trial information which parties may already “know” on some level short of admissible evidence. O’Leary’s responses may have differed in some salient respect from the other responses, making them noncumulative and perhaps creating a fact question and some small window for meaningful development of the plaintiffs case. Having foreclosed plaintiffs right to proper responses to the discovery he propounded to the defendants, the majority then finds, on the basis of “the record,” that he has “failed to prove” his due process and equal protection claims. I believe this decision denigrates both the inherent importance of discovery as a vital tool in the adversarial litigation process we have adopted in our courts and the efforts of our supreme court to emphasize its significance by insisting on full and careful compliance with discovery rules. Because I would find reversible error with regard to what I believe to be clear discovery violations, I believe the balance of the opinion is premature.