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Stycket v. Vanorsdel9/13/2000
had failed to timely supplement Interrogatory No. 11.
Vanorsdel conceded liability in this matter. Accordingly, the parties agreed as a result of the trial court's ruling, it would not be necessary to impanel a jury and try this matter. They agreed judgment would be entered in favor of the plaintiffs and against the defendant for $660.74 to cover Aleisha Stycket's past medical expenses that the defendant had been advised of.
Discussion.
The imposition of discovery sanctions by the trial court is discretionary and will not be reversed unless there has been an abuse of discretion. Sukow v. Boone State Bank & Trust, Co., 314 N.W.2d 421, 425 (Iowa 1982). An abuse of discretion consists of a ruling which rests upon clearly untenable or unreasonable grounds. Troendle v. Hanson, 570 N.W.2d 753, 755 (Iowa 1997). Where a sanction selected by the trial court is dismissal of an action, the range of discretion is narrowed. To justify this, a party's noncompliance must be due to willfulness, fault, or bad faith. Sukow, 314 N.W.2d at 425.
Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 134 covers the consequences for failure to make discovery. Aside from this rule, violations of discovery rules may warrant sanctions. Sullivan v. Chicago Northwestern Transp., 326 N.W.2d 320, 324 (Iowa 1982). Before discovery sanctions can be imposed, the offending party must be afforded the opportunity of a hearing. Schwarz v. Meyer, 500 N.W.2d 87, 88 (Iowa App. 1993). A preclusive order insures that a party will not be able to profit from its own failure to comply with discovery requests. Schwartzbach v. Schwartzbach, 446 N.W.2d 475, 479 (Iowa App. 1989).
For approximately thirteen months in spite of two written requests from the defendant, plaintiff failed to supplement Interrogatory No. 11. The defendant was entitled to be informed of the amount of the plaintiffs' claim. Gordon v. Noel, 356 N.W.2d 559, 564 (Iowa 1984). The plaintiff supplemented other interrogatories a few days before trial but did not supplement Interrogatory No. 11.
The plaintiff contends in argument the defendant had secured information concerning the claim for the plaintiff through their discovery proceedings and as a result of a patient's waiver the plaintiff had given to the defendant. However, they discovered no information about the amount of damages claimed by the plaintiff and it is the burden of the plaintiff to provide this information to the defendant. Id.
The sanction imposed by the trial court was not a dismissal of the action, although the plaintiff argues it was tantamount to a dismissal. Although not relevant to this ruling, the actions of the plaintiff in ignoring the time constraints imposed by the Rules of Civil Procedure in answering interrogatories as well as ignoring two requests for response from the defendant and then supplementing other interrogatories shortly before trial and continuing to ignore Interrogatory No. 11 amount to willfulness and fault on their part.
The sanction selected by the trial court was one which would prevent the plaintiff from profiting by their delay in responding to the interrogatory. We find the trial court did not abuse its discretion in imposing the sanction, and it was clearly reasonable under the circumstances.
AFFIRMED.
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