Atlanta, GA asked in Personal Injury and Civil Litigation for Georgia

Q: If the defendant did not follow the instructions and objected to every question in discovery & interrogatories what I do

Civil Personal Injury

2 Lawyer Answers
Michael W. Horst
Michael W. Horst
Answered
  • Alpharetta, GA
  • Licensed in Georgia

A: A discovery dispute is a two step process: (1) The law first requires that you confer with the opposing party in an effort to work through the dispute. If your attempt(s) to resolve the dispute do not work, then you go to the next step (2) File a motion to compel with the Court against the defendant. In the motion, you need to certify to the Court that you tried to resolve the issues by agreement (i.e. No. 1) but that your efforts failed.

Peter Christopher Lomtevas
Peter Christopher Lomtevas pro label Lawyers, want to be a Justia Connect Pro too? Learn more ›
Answered
  • Schenectady, NY
  • Licensed in Georgia

A: This question is eye-catching because of what could be a discovery ruse that government defendants always pull and always get away with before sympathetic judges. There is not enough information here to opine exactly as to what is happening, but reading between the lines is possible.

There is a policy shift taking place across the nation in tort cases involving municipalities. Judges are instructed to dismiss personal injury cases and to do so in clever ways. For example, a judge can enter multiple discovery orders requiring documents and depositions, and then refuse to enforce those orders suddenly dismissing a municipal entity. In such cases, defendant municipalities object to each and every discovery demand: the demand is over broad, is irrelevant, is too voluminous, seeks information from an undefined period, assumes non-established facts, is ambiguous, seeks privileged information, is duplicative, is of the wrong party and so on. All of these responses are code for a defendant who is impervious to discovery thanks to the trial judge.

If this action is for a medical malpractice in a municipal hospital, the same rules apply, and the same result accrues. The idea is to reduce frivolous cases to reduce the cost of health care in this country, and judges are hand-picked by their constituent district leaders to enforce that policy despite established tort and procedural law. In such a case, a lawyer who is not afraid of the judicial apparatus will move for sanctions, and then appeal. If the appellate court is in on the ruse, then the attorney will appeal higher until he gets to a point where the law and procedural rules are followed despite political pressures to snuff out plaintiff's municipal and medical malpractice cases.

Such attorneys are few and far between as few attorneys want to muddy the apparatus that pays their bills. As to what to do, the asker must ask his lawyer.

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