General Tire, Inc. v. Kepple Ex Rel. Kepple

917 S.W.2d 444, 1996 WL 75667
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 28, 1996
Docket14-94-01166-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 917 S.W.2d 444 (General Tire, Inc. v. Kepple Ex Rel. Kepple) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
General Tire, Inc. v. Kepple Ex Rel. Kepple, 917 S.W.2d 444, 1996 WL 75667 (Tex. Ct. App. 1996).

Opinions

OPINION

LEE, Justice.

General Tire, Inc. appeals a determination by the trial court that documents presented during discovery are not entitled to protection under rules of civil procedure 166b or 76a. General Tire brings six points of error challenging the court’s interpretation of the rules, the sufficiency of the evidence and the constitutionality of rule 76a. We affirm.

Kyle Kepple, through his next friend, Kenneth Kepple, and others sued General Tire and Ford Motor Company alleging that tires manufactured by General Tire were defective causing tread separation and contributing to a rollover of a Ford Bronco II. The rollover rendered Kepple incompetent and quadriplegic.

During discovery, numerous documents were produced by General Tire and depositions of their personnel were taken pursuant to a rule 166b interim protective order issued in January 1994. During a March 1994 pretrial hearing on various discovery motions, [447]*447the trial court indicated that General Tire should move to seal the documents under rule 76a. A week later, April 4,1994, General Tire filed a motion to retain the January protective order or, alternatively, to temporarily seal the documents under rule 76a. The court had not ruled on the motion when the parties settled. Consequently, General Tire allowed the motion to pass without obtaining a ruling from the court. In June, pursuant to the settlement, the court dismissed the suit against General Tire, with prejudice.

Kepple’s trial counsel was aware of an attorney in Georgia who had a grievance action and two show cause motions filed against him for failure to comply with a protective order in a substantially similar case involving General Tire and Ford. To avoid similar difficulties in this case, in August, Kepple’s trial counsel moved for relief from the January protective order issued in this case. On September 19, 1994, the court granted Kepple relief from the protective order and set it aside as “null and void.” General Tire immediately responded and requested a hearing on its April motion for retention of the January protective order or temporary sealing. On September 21, the court denied General Tire’s request for a protective order, but granted, in part, its temporary sealing order and set a rule 76a hearing to determine if the documents should be sealed.

General Tire filed another motion for protection under rule 166b or, alternatively, sealing under rule 76a. A full rule 76a hearing was noticed and held in November. At this hearing, both parties presented expert testimony and tendered numerous documents for the court to review in camera. The documents tendered by General Tire were produced by them in the discovery of this case while the documents tendered by Kep-ple were General Tire documents initially produced during an earlier suit with a different plaintiff (Benson documents).1 In addition to the parties to the litigation, several parties intervened and appeared. See Tex. R.Civ.P. 76a(3). After hearing substantial testimony, the court determined that all the documents were “court records” and, thus, subject to the rule. See Tex.R.Civ.P. 76a(2). The court then proceeded on General Tire’s alternative rule 76a request to seal the documents. General Tire presented additional testimony and reoffered its earlier evidence in support of sealing the documents. The following day, the court issued an order which found that:

1. rule 166b requires compliance with rule 76a when a party attempts to limit the distribution of documents obtained during discovery;
2. the unfiled discovery documents were court records because they contained matters that “have a probable adverse effect on the general public health or safety or the administration of public office or the operation of government;” and
3. General Tire failed to demonstrate that the documents should not be open to the public.

In its first point of error, General Tire argues that the trial court erred in holding that rule 76a procedures applied to its request for limited protection under rule 166b. Rule 166b authorizes a trial court to enter a protective order when good cause is shown to protect the results of discovery. The court may order that discovery “be sealed or otherwise adequately protected, that its distribution be limited, or that its disclosure be restricted.” Tex.R.Civ.P. 166b. However, rule 166b also states that any protection of the results of discovery “shall be made in accordance with the provisions of Rule 76a with respect to all court records subject to that rule.” Id. Thus, in a fairly straightforward application of the two rules, this court held in Ford Motor Co. v. Benson, 846 S.W.2d 487 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 1993, writ dism’d as moot), that rule 76a applies to “court records” while rule 166b does not. Id. at 490-91; see also Upjohn Co. v. Freeman, 906 S.W.2d 92 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1995, no writ) (Upjohn III) (trial court [448]*448cannot presume that the results of discovery-are court records; if a party contests the issue, the trial court must determine if documents are court records). Thus, when a trial court is presented with a request for protection under rule 166b, it is to proceed without regard to rule 76a until the non-movant alleges and establishes that the documents are “court records.” The burden of proof is then on the non-movant in the rule 166b proceeding to show that the documents sought to be protected include “court records” and, therefore, fall within rule 76a. Benson, 846 S.W.2d at 491; see also Eli Lilly and Co. v. Biffle, 868 S.W.2d 806, 808 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1993, no writ) (if a party raises an issue whether documents are “court records,” the burden is on the party attempting to “receive the benefit of the presumption of openness”). Therefore, if Kepple carried his burden and the documents were “court records,” then the court did not err in applying rule 76a rather than rule 166b.

In General Tire’s second point of error, it contends that there was either no evidence or insufficient evidence to support the trial court’s determination that the documents were “court records.” In order to address General Tire’s contention, we must initially determine the appropriate standard of review applicable to rule 76a motions.

As the Texarkana court recently discussed, there is some confusion among the courts of appeals whether to apply an abuse of discretion or sufficiency of the evidence standard of review. See Burlington N. R.R. Co. v. Southwestern Elec. Power Co., 906 S.W.2d 683, 686 (Tex.App.-Texarkana 1995, no writ). The Dallas, Eastland and Beaumont courts have applied the abuse of discretion standard, while the San Antonio court and former supreme court justice Lloyd Dog-gett, urge that sufficiency of the evidence is the appropriate standard. Compare Upjohn III, 906 S.W.2d at 95 and Boardman v. Elm Block Dev. Ltd. Partnership, 872 S.W.2d 297, 299 (Tex.App.-Eastland 1994, no writ) and Upjohn Co. v. Freeman, 847 S.W.2d 589, 590 (Tex.App.-Dallas 1992, no writ)

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Related

Scolaro v. State Ex Rel. Jones
1 S.W.3d 749 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1999)
General Tire, Inc. v. Kepple
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General Tire, Inc. v. Kepple Ex Rel. Kepple
917 S.W.2d 444 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1996)

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