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Kawamata Farms Inc. v. United Agri Products12/11/1997
results in response to previous circuit court orders. As a result, the Plaintiffs moved for sanctions against DuPont, requesting, among other things, that the circuit court admit into evidence the Benlate-testing summary, an 84-page summary of contamination test results for Benlate DF manufactured from 1987 to 1991 (hereinafter referred to as Exhibit P-9369A). The circuit court granted the Plaintiffs' request to admit Exhibit P-9369A into evidence.
Several months later, Exhibit P-9369A became the source of the second major discovery dispute. When Keeler took the witness stand in the instant case in November 1994, the Plaintiffs showed him Exhibit P-9369A, and Keeler again vouched for its overall accuracy. However, the following month, nine days before the trial's Conclusion, Plaintiffs discovered that, during yet another deposition in the Florida case, Keeler had produced a stack of documents that included four pages of Benlate test results that had not been included in Exhibit P-9369A. In response, the Plaintiffs again moved for sanctions against DuPont, arguing that DuPont had intentionally withheld those test results from the Plaintiffs. The circuit court agreed with the Plaintiffs that sanctions were appropriate because DuPont had not properly identified and produced the test results in response to the Plaintiffs' interrogatories. Accordingly, the circuit court sanctioned DuPont by, among other things, (1) allowing plaintiffs to introduce the four pages of test results into evidence in the trial as Plaintiffs' Exhibit K-41, and (2) allowing the Plaintiffs' counsel to read to the jury selected excerpts from Keeler's December 1994 Florida deposition testimony.
The third major discovery dispute during trial involved documents relating to scientific testing that Alta Analytical Laboratory, Inc., (Alta) had performed on DuPont's behalf in response to other Benlate-related litigation. Alta's testing sought to determine the validity of many Benlate-related claims nationwide regarding soil contamination resulting from Benlate application. Earlier in this case, DuPont had agreed to provide the Plaintiffs with the Alta test results relating to their own soils, but DuPont had invoked the work-product privilege with respect to the Alta test results relating to the soils of plaintiffs in other Benlate cases. Acting upon the recommendation of a discovery master, retired Judge Frank T. Takao (Discovery Master Takao), the circuit court ordered DuPont to produce the Alta test results (Alta documents) relating to all the other Benlate cases, subject to protective orders prohibiting Plaintiffs' counsel from distributing the Alta documents to plaintiffs' counsel in other Benlate cases. DuPont sought emergency review of the circuit court's decision compelling production of the Alta documents by petitioning this court for a writ of mandamus, but, in Case No. 17834, we denied the petition without prejudice.
The discovery dispute involving the Alta documents erupted in October 1994, during the defense phase of the trial, when the plaintiffs in a Benlate-related case in Texas obtained six boxes of Alta documents, including material relating to testing of soils for Benlate contamination, that DuPont had failed to produce in the instant case in response to the Plaintiffs' previous discovery requests. The Plaintiffs discovered this fact and moved for sanctions against DuPont, alleging that DuPont should have previously produced all of these Alta documents during the discovery phase of this litigation pursuant to circuit court order. In response, the circuit court granted the Plaintiffs' motion for sanctions. The circuit court specifically found that DuPont's non-production of the Alta documents was intentiona
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