Court Opinion

ID: 9710353
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:08:01.611242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:21:51.894698
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE KUNCE delivered the opinion of the court: Plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the Circuit Court of Madison County dismissing her cause of action for failure to comply with defendant-appellee’s request for discovery. In January 1975, the plaintiff brought suit under the Jones Act (33 U.S.C. §901 (1970)) for damages allegedly suffered from an injury received while she worked on defendant’s vessel. After various motions, hearings, and orders with respect to the pleadings, defendant’s answer was filed in July 1975. Discovery was commenced on July 25, 1975, by defendant’s service of interrogatories. Plaintiff’s answers to interrogatories were filed October 28, 1975. It appears from the record that a notice of pretrial conferences for jury trials docketed for September and October of 1976 was sent to the parties on July 6, 1976. This suit was included in that docket. On August 11,1976, defendant served upon plaintiff a request to produce and filed a motion to compel answers to its earlier interrogatories, asserting that certain of plaintiff’s answers thereto had been unresponsive. Defendant apparently was readying its defense for the upcoming jury trial. It next appears that on October 6, 1976, defendant wrote a letter to plaintiff’s counsel requesting that plaintiff comply with its request to produce within 10 days, failing which it would file a motion to compel compliance. Plaintiff failed to respond or comply. On October 28,1976, a motion to compel was duly filed and served by the defendant. On November I, 1976, the court entered an order to the effect that plaintiff’s cause of action was dismissed unless plaintiff complied with discovery within seven days. The order, which was mailed to counsel, specifically stated that if plaintiff complied with discovery within seven days the order was to be automatically vacated. Plaintiff failed to comply as ordered. Plaintiff argues that the trial court abused its discretion by its order of dismissal. She contends that the court’s sanction of dismissal was a penalty rather than a means of furthering discovery and that the dismissal was too severe a sanction given the circumstances.  Although we believe the dismissal order is not properly in issue in this appeal for the reason that notice of appeal of that order was untimely, we nevertheless have considered the issue and find the dismissal order free from error. Supreme Court Rule 219(c) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1977, ch. 110A, par. 219(c)) provides that if a party unreasonably refuses to comply with discovery rules, the court may enter “such orders as are just,” thereafter specifying a number of sanctions which such an order might include. Rule 219(c) (v) provides that “a judgment by default [may] be entered against the offending party or that his suit [may] be dismissed with or without prejudice.” Our scope of review is limited to whether the sanction ordered below was an abuse of the court’s discretion. Finfrock v. Eaton Asphalt Co. (1976), 41 Ill. App. 3d 1020, 355 N.E.2d 214, 218. In determining whether the trial court’s sanction of dismissal was an abuse of discretion we look to People ex rel. General Motors Corp. v. Bua (1967), 37 Ill. 2d 180, 196, 226 N.E.2d 6, 16, for the supreme court’s guideline to imposing such sanctions: “ ‘The sanctions the court may impose are such as are suitable and necessary to enable the party seeking discovery to obtain the objects of discovery he seeks but the court may not impose sanctions which are designed not to accomplish the objects of the discovery but to impose punishment.’ ”  Applying this test to the court’s dismissal order, we note that this cause was being readied for an approaching trial date by the court and by the defendant who was attempting to complete pretrial discovery. There was need for immediate compliance with discovery rules. Against that background, we observe that plaintiff had had three specific opportunities to comply with the defendant’s request to produce — first, after defendant filed the request in August; second, following defendant’s request letter dated October 6; and third, after defendant filed its motion to compel on October 29. We note, also, that there was pending in this proceeding a prior motion to compel answers to interrogatories. Plaintiff’s lack of cooperation in the pretrial discovery stage was apparent and especially intolerable at a time when the matter was about to be tried. The court, however, gave plaintiff one more chance by providing in its order that if plaintiff complied with discovery within seven days, the dismissal was to be automatically vacated. To have ordered the plaintiff to comply within seven days and then to have dismissed her complaint if that compliance was not forthcoming certainly would have been proper. This is, in effect, what the trial court did by its conditional order of dismissal. This order was neither punitive nor too severe. Examining the events following the entry of that order and the basis for the court’s later judgment on plaintiff’s section 72 petition, we note that on December 30, 1976, plaintiff filed a petition asking the court to vacate its November 1 order and to reinstate her complaint. On January 20, 1977, plaintiff’s petition was dismissed for the reason that 30 days had passed since the dismissal order and the court was powerless to act under the present state of the pleadings. On January 28, plaintiff filed a motion to vacate pursuant to section 72 of the Civil Practice Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1977, ch. 110, par. 72). Attached was an affidavit made by counsel. On February 7 defendant made a special appearance and moved to quash on the basis of plaintiff’s improper service of the motion upon defendant. This motion was confessed by plaintiff on February 8, and an order allowing the motion was entered on February 16. On May 17 plaintiff filed another section 72 petition. Defendant moved to dismiss this petition because, among other deficiencies, the petition and affidavits of record failed to plead and show that plaintiff had acted with due diligence either before and/or after the November 1 order of dismissal or that the court had acted unfairly or unconscionably in regard to that order. Following argument on May 27 the court entered an order reinstating plaintiff’s cause. On June 6 defendant filed a motion for reconsideration asking the court to dismiss plaintiff’s petitions to reinstate. This motion stated that at the May 27 motion hearing plaintiff’s counsel had represented unto the court that “due diligence” was no longer required in a section 72 petition pursuant to a recent Illinois Appellate Court decision which plaintiff’s counsel was unable to locate or cite for the court but upon which the court had based its order reinstating plaintiff’s cause. Defendant further proposed that plaintiff’s statement of the law was erroneous. On June 24 defendant’s motion was called for hearing and “passed, to be reset, so as to allow plaintiff five days to file an affidavit in connection with her Section 72 petition.” On July 8 defendant notified the court that no affidavit had been filed and requested a hearing on its motion to reconsider. On July 19 that motion was heard with counsel for both parties present and with the plaintiff still having failed to file a supplemental affidavit. The court allowed defendant’s motion to reconsider and dismissed plaintiff’s section 72 petition. On March 25, 1977, the day before the running of the statute of limitations, plaintiff filed a new complaint based on the same cause of action. It was assigned a distinct docket number of 77-L-218. The previous proceedings were under docket number 75-L-45. Defendant’s motion for reconsideration showed docket number 77-L-218 rather than 75-L-45 which was on the May 27 order reinstating plaintiff’s suit. On its own motion, on July 19, the court ordered, nunc pro tunc, that pleadings and orders filed in 77-L-218 be transferred to the 75-L-45 docket as though they had been originally filed in that proceeding. On August 16 plaintiff filed a motion to reconsider stating that defendant’s motion to reconsider had been filed in the wrong cause of action and that this was her reason for not having filed an affidavit before the July 19 hearing. On November 4 her counsel’s affidavit was filed setting forth, at last, plaintiff’s counsel’s excuse for having failed to comply with discovery. On November 8 the court entered an order stating “Plaintiff’s motion to reconsider presented, argued and denied. Defendant’s motion to quash et al is moot.” Plaintiff’s case drew its last breath, and she prays us to revive it. Plaintiff claims that she has met the section 72 requirements of a meritorious claim and diligence in bringing her section 72 action and that it was error to deny her petition. She further maintains that regardless of section 72 requirements, justice will only prevail when she is permitted to present her case in court on the merits.  Section 72 is in our code of civil procedure to permit the court to undo that which it has done in exclusive reliance on the record but which it would not have done had it known facts not of record. (Department of Public Works & Buddings v. Vogt (1977), 51 Ill. App. 3d 770, 779, 366 N.E.2d 310, 316.) Among the requirements for section 72 relief are the petitioner’s showing of a meritorious claim or defense and diligence in presenting that claim or defense. Defendant concedes for purposes of this appeal that a meritorious claim is stated. What is at issue is whether plaintiff’s section 72 petition properly pleaded due diligence and whether it was sufficiendy supported by facts showing diligence. To give plaintiff every benefit of the doubt we have examined both her petitions under section 72 (motion to vacate filed January 28, 1977, and petition to reinstate filed May 17,1977) and all affidavits and verified statements filed by her in this proceeding. We find a showing of due diligence on plaintiff’s part with respect to pursuing her section 72 relief; however, plaintiff must also show she was diligent in pursuing her claim prior to the dismissal toward which the section 72 relief is directed. (Riley v. Unknown Owners (1972), 6 Ill. App. 3d 864, 867, 286 N.E.2d 806,808.) We find that neither petition nor any of the verified statements on record at the time of the July 19 dismissal plead or show her diligence prior to the November 1 order of dismissal. Indeed, it was plaintiff’s lack of diligence which resulted in the original dismissal and it was incumbent upon plaintiff to show facts which might have excused her failure to act. This plaintiff failed to do.  It is true that finally, on November 14,1977, plaintiff filed an affidavit addressing her excuse for failure to comply with discovery procedures more than a year earlier; however, this affidavit was not of record on July 19 when the trial court dismissed her section 72 petition. Besides being tardy, it is insufficient. At best, it states that plaintiff’s counsel failed to receive notice of the November 1 dismissal order or a copy of it and suggested that this may have been because counsel was at that time in the process of changing office locations. Plaintiff failed to allege that notice was not actually sent. The record reflects that notice was mailed. The allegation of nonreceipt absent a concurrent allegation that notices were not sent to her or to her attorney of record is inadequate. (Fennema v. Vander (1969), 42 Ill. 2d 309, 247 N.E.2d 409, 410.) In any event, it is an accepted rule that a litigant has an obligation to independently keep abreast of her case’s progress. Plaintiff further contends that justice and good conscience may require a judgment be set aside even in the absence of a showing of due diligence. We have reviewed the authorities she has cited for this proposition and find them to be distinguishable from this matter in that those cases contained extenuating circumstances of fraud or unconscionable behavior by opposing counsel or the court. Such circumstances were not present here; neither were they pleaded by plaintiff in her petitions for section 72 relief nor shown in her tardy affidavit.  Plaintiff, by failing to attend her case, is justifiably out of court. Opposing counsel was on his toes and he and the court proceeded with propriety at all stages in this matter. Decisions such as these are disconcerting to both the trial and appellate bench; however, a section 72 petition is not intended to relieve a party from the consequences of his own mistake or negligence. The judgment of the Circuit Court of Madison County is hereby affirmed. Affirm. JONES and KARNS, JJ., concur.