Where a plaintiff repeatedly failed to comply with discovery requests and discovery orders and lied about the existence of discoverable information, the trial court’s dismissal of the case and award of attorney’s fees as a sanction was affirmed.
In Plofchan v. Hughey, No. M2021-00853-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 5, 2024), plaintiff filed a claim for defamation and negligence per se against three police officers, the police department, and the related university after he was arrested while intoxicated. On the night he was arrested, he met a woman named Madeleine Byrd, and Ms. Byrd was present when plaintiff was arrested. After the arrest, plaintiff exchanged Facebook messages with Ms. Byrd asking what she remembered about that night. Her responses would not have been favorable to plaintiff’s case.
During discovery, defendants requested any correspondence with Ms. Byrd. Plaintiff replied that none existed, and during his deposition, he stated that he had searched and found none. He continued to state that none existed even after a motion to compel was filed. Ms. Byrd, through her own counsel, allowed defendants to review the messages between her and plaintiff. Plaintiff eventually produced some of the messages, saying that he had forgotten about them. When confronted with the fact that there were more, he stated that he had deleted some at his girlfriend’s request.
Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint as a sanction for failing to comply with the trial court’s order compelling production of the messages. The trial court granted the motion, dismissed the case, and granted defendant and Ms. Byrd attorneys’ fees related to the discovery issue, all of which was affirmed on appeal.
The Court of Appeals first affirmed that dismissal was an appropriate sanction here. The Court noted that the trial court had found plaintiff not credible, and that plaintiff’s lies and misrepresentations were repeated many times. The Court rejected plaintiff’s assertion that the messages sought were work product, as plaintiff’s attorney never submitted an affidavit stating that the messages were created in preparation for litigation. Further, the Court rejected plaintiff’s argument that he had sufficiently supplemented his discovery responses. Based on the repeated failure to comply with the discovery requests and court order, the Court ruled that dismissal was not an abuse of discretion.
Next, the Court considered whether dismissal was too harsh a sanction. The Court noted that a party seeking dismissal as a sanction is not required to show prejudice “when a party repeatedly disobeys orders of the court and lies about the existence of evidence.” Here, plaintiff’s ever-changing story led to the Court finding that dismissal was “within the range of acceptable dispositions for such actions.”
Finally, the Court affirmed the amount of fees and costs awarded to defendants and Ms. Byrd. Although the total amount was over $50,000, the Court noted that the “monetary sanctions were directly related to the discovery abuses and were not excessive under the circumstances.” (internal citation omitted). The trial court’s ruling was therefore affirmed in whole.
This opinion was released one year after oral arguments in this case.