Reminiscent of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where Toto exposes the “great and powerful Oz” to be nothing more than a frail man hiding behind a curtain, counsel for State Farm implores the Court to “pay no attention” to its failure to comply with yet another court order…
Bossier’s Reply in Support of Motion for Sanctions Under Rule 37(b) provides the Court with additional information on document requested in discovery, contending the these are examples of State Farm’s conduct that violates the Court’s Order and subjects the Company to the sanctions of Rule 37(b) FRCP :
Shellie Leverett’s re-evaluation report was finally produced three days following her deposition. (See Exhibit 1). A statement State Farm took of Joseph Ziz on May 11, 2009, was produced on July 8, 2009, (the day before Mr. Ziz’s deposition)although the attached map was not produced until the day after his deposition. (Exhibit 2). Some requests have never been fulfilled. For example, State Farm produced only part of the underwriting file and has ignored requests for the rest. (Exhibit 3). (emphasis added)
Bossier added a startling claim in a footnote to the five-page chart that offers the Court additional examples of State Farm’s response to discovery with a comparison of the documents State Farm listed in the privilege log of Lizana v State Farm to the treatment of those same documents in Bossier.
…State Farm…has failed to identify any specific document as having been produced among the 9,000 pages contained on two unlabeled, unindexed CD’s produced in discovery. A lack of such identification obviously fails to establish that any particular document was, in fact, produced in this case and constitutes an admission by omission.
SLABBED will examine the confusing, and perhaps conflicting, position of the Court on protective orders after Continue reading “What’s the Score? dog-wagging-tail protective orders turn game around (part 2 of 2)”