Bohannon v. Honda Motor Co.

127 F.R.D. 536, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13760, 1989 WL 99797
CourtDistrict Court, D. Kansas
DecidedMarch 14, 1989
DocketCiv. A. No. 87-2605-S
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 127 F.R.D. 536 (Bohannon v. Honda Motor Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bohannon v. Honda Motor Co., 127 F.R.D. 536, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13760, 1989 WL 99797 (D. Kan. 1989).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

GERALD L. RUSHFELT, United States Magistrate.

Under consideration is Defendant American Honda Motor Co.’s (Honda) Motion to Compel Discovery Responses (doc. 48). Pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 37, Honda seeks to compel supplemental responses to Interrogatory 16 and Production Requests 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 17. Plaintiff claimed to be unable to answer Interrogatory 16. He objected to- the production requests as seeking work product or material protected by the collateral-source rule.

Interrogatory 16 asks plaintiff to describe with particularity the alleged defect in the Honda ATV vehicle that caused or contributed to the accident that allegedly caused plaintiff’s injuries. Plaintiff responded that it would answer Interrogatory 16 when further discovery was completed. Plaintiff claims he must obtain the design, testing, and safety information requested from Honda before he can respond. He contends his expert must evaluate the material, before he specifically describes the defects in the Honda vehicle.

The court finds plaintiff’s explanation insufficient to resist discovery. An interrogatory may properly inquire into a party’s contentions in the case. Hercules, Inc. v. Exxon Corp., 434 F.Supp. 136, 157 (D.Del.1977). Plaintiff is not entitled to withhold discovery information until he has obtained to his own satisfaction all discovery from Honda. Plaintiff must be aware of some defect in the vehicle which forms the basis of his own complaint. Accordingly, he has a duty to answer the interrogatory with whatever information he has. Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(e) provides ample procedure for supplementing a response, if necessary.

Production Requests 11 and 12 seek copies of documents, recordings or photographs that plaintiff contends support any allegation in the lawsuit. Plaintiff objected to production on grounds of work product. He raised numerous other objections in his memoranda. The court will disregard these later objections. They are untimely. Plaintiff did not assert them in his written responses to the discovery requests.

Plaintiff argues the vast majority of responsive documents were obtained through the ATV litigation group and are work product. These documents were selected from a large number of documents in the possession of the litigation support group. He argues that their disclosure would reveal counsel’s opinions, mental processes, and legal theories. For authority plaintiff cites Sporck v. Peil, 759 F.2d 312, 316 (3rd Cir.1985), Omaha Public Power Dist. v. Foster Wheeler Corp., 109 F.R.D. 615, 616 (D.Neb.1986), and other similar eases.

In order to qualify as work product under Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(3) the material must be all of the following:

1. Documents and tangible things;

[539]*5392. Prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial;

3. Prepared by or for another party or by or for that other party’s representative.

These documents were not “prepared by or on behalf of plaintiff.” Sporck and other cases do hold that selection, grouping and synthesis of documents may, nevertheless, constitute work product. If the court follows those decisions, it must determine whether the documents were grouped, selected and synthesized in anticipation of litigation. In this case plaintiff contends “counsel obtained documents from the ATY litigation group after being consulted by Plaintiff Bohannon and for the sole purpose of preparing for litigation against Honda on his behalf.” See Plaintiff’s Response to Defendant American Honda Co’s Motion to Compel discovery Responses, Doc. 52 at p. 5.

Plaintiff does not specify when the documents were obtained, whether they were obtained before or after suit was filed, or when his counsel learned that the vehicle in question may have a defect which contributed to or caused plaintiff’s injuries. His bare conclusion, unsupported by affidavit or specific explanation, is all that supports his work-product objection. Plaintiff has not met his burden of establishing the material was grouped or synthesized in anticipation of litigation. Moreover, work product status does not apply to documents submitted to or received from a third party. Jewish Hospital Ass’n of Louisville v. Struck Const. Co., 77 F.R.D. 59, 61 (W.D.Ky.1978).

Were the court to find the mere gathering of material constitutes work product, it would nevertheless find the material discoverable. Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(3) a party may discover work product if the discovering party shows the following: (1) there is substantial need of the material in the preparation of his case; and (2) that he is unable without undue hardship to obtain the substantial equivalent of the materials by other means. Work product reflecting the opinions, mental processes and legal theories of counsel, or “opinion work product” is immune from discovery in the absence of extreme need.

Plaintiff claims that counsel’s selection of documents constitutes opinion work product. United States v. Chatham City Corp., 72 F.R.D. 640, 643 (S.D.Ga.1976); Sporck v. Peil, 759 F.2d at 316. Some courts, however, have found the grouping of documents does not constitute opinion work product. See San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire Litigation, 859 F.2d 1007 (1st Cir.1988). There the court said:

In Sporck, the majority emphasized that “[i]n selecting and ordering a few documents out of thousands, counsel could not help but reveal important aspects of his understanding of the case.” 759 F.2d at 316 (quoting James Julian, Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 93 F.R.D. 138, 144 (D.Del.1982)). This reasoning, we suggest, is flawed because it assumes that the revelatory nature of the sought-after information is, in itself, sufficient to cloak the information with the heightened protection of opinion work product. That is simply not the case; much depends on whether the fruits of the screening would soon be revealed in any event ...
For these reasons, we rule that compelled disclosure of document lists under the district court’s identification protocol does not implicate opinion work product and thus does not constitute an impermissible per se intrusion into the lawyer’s protected zone of privacy.

Id. at 1018.

The court finds San Juan offers the sounder rule. Neither plaintiff nor his attorney generated these documents. They do not even contend that they themselves grouped or synthesized them. In fact, defendant prepared and produced them in previous litigation. The court does not find disclosure of these documents would disclose the mental processes' of counsel. Sporck is otherwise distinguishable. It involved a trial exhibit list, generated by counsel in preparation for trial.

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Bluebook (online)
127 F.R.D. 536, 1989 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13760, 1989 WL 99797, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bohannon-v-honda-motor-co-ksd-1989.