Garcia-Perez v. Hospital Metropolitano

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 09-1721
MONSERRATE GARCÍA-PÉREZ, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
HOSPITAL METROPOLITANO, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Juan M. Pérez-Giménez, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Lipez and Howard, Circuit Judges.
Humberto R. Vázquez-Sandoval on brief for appellants.
Gloria M. De Corral and De Corral & De Mier on brief for
appellee, Hospital Metropolitano.
Juan M. Masini-Soler on brief for appellees, Rafael Ramírez-
Pepen, Conjugal Partnership Ramírez-Doe.
February 24, 2010
Per Curiam. On the scheduled trial date, which had been
set only six days earlier, the district court, acting sua sponte,
dismissed this case with prejudice "for lack of prosecution based
on the plaintiffs' non-compliance with discovery deadlines,"
particularly their failure to produce a medical expert report.
Without condoning the plaintiffs' lengthy and unjustified delay in
producing their expert's report, we reluctantly vacate the dismissal
because, in short, the absence of a clearly communicated deadline
for providing expert reports or notice that failing to do so more
promptly could result in dismissal rendered that drastic sanction
an abuse of discretion. We explain.
We review dismissals under Rule 41(b) for abuse of
discretion. Malot v. Dorado Beach Cottage Assocs., 478 F.3d 40, 43
(1st Cir. 2007). Although "[c]laims that a court has abused its
discretion in dismissing a case for failure to adhere to discovery
orders or for failure to prosecute have 'not received a sympathetic
ear,'" id. (quoting Damiani v. R.I. Hosp., 704 F.2d 12, 17 (1st Cir.
1983)), we "must fairly balance the court's venerable authority over
case management with the larger concerns of justice, including the
strong presumption in favor of deciding cases on the merits," id.,and "procedural aspects such as notice," Benitez-Garcia v. Gonzalez-
Vega, 468 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2006). This is the rare case where
the latter concerns outweigh the former.
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The plaintiffs' three-year delay in producing their
expert's report was sufficiently "extreme" to warrant the harsh
sanction of dismissal,1 see Malot, 478 F.3d at 44 (describing this
court's tendency "to reserve dismissal with prejudice for delays
measured in years"); and they offered no legitimate excuse for that
lengthy delay,2 see Benitez-Garcia, 468 F.3d at 5. Nevertheless,
other relevant factors weigh heavily against imposing that drastic
sanction here.
First of all, without condoning the lethargic pace that
this litigation took, the responsibility for that pace was shared,
in large part, by the district court,3 which failed to exercise its
1
Although the district court also premised its dismissal
order, more generally, on the plaintiffs' "non-compliance with
discovery orders," it identified no such orders and none are
pointed out by the appellees or apparent in the record. Cf. Ortiz-
Lopez v. Sociedad Espanola De Auxilio Mutuo y Beneficiencia, 248
F.3d 29, 36 (1st Cir. 2001) (affirming dismissal with prejudice
where district court made "explicit and lengthy findings of
egregious discovery abuses"). The plaintiffs did delay in filing
their second amended complaint, but their failure to do so more
promptly was related to their delay in obtaining expert advice, not
to any other discovery violations.
2
Other than the absence of a deadline, the plaintiffs' only
excuse was that their original expert took longer than expected to
produce his report and they were therefore forced to retain a new
one. But the plaintiffs apparently gave their original expert no
deadline for producing his report and were not aggressive in
seeking it more promptly. And even after they retained a new
expert, another year went by without production of an expert
report.
3
As in Ortiz-Anglada v. Ortiz-Perez, 183 F.3d 65, 67 n.4 (1st
Cir. 1999), and Malot, 478 F.3d at 45, the defendants here also
share this responsibility. One of the defendants failed to answer
the first amended complaint until more than two months after the
already extended deadline without seeking a further extension;
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"abiding responsibility" under federal and local rules to "take an
active role in case management," Tower Ventures, Inc. v. City of
Westfield, 296 F.3d 43, 46 (1st Cir. 2002), by "issu[ing] orders 'as
soon as practicable' fixing deadlines for the completion of
discovery" and other pretrial events. Torres v. Puerto Rico, 485
F.3d 5, 10 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b)); see also
Ortiz-Anglada, 183 F.3d at 66-67 (vacating a dismissal with
prejudice where the district court failed to impose deadlines
through a scheduling order). Contrary to federal Rule 16(b), the
district court never issued an initial scheduling order; and,
contrary to the corresponding local rule, it never scheduled or held
a pretrial conference and did not set a trial date until six days
before trial. Although the court did set a deadline for the
plaintiffs' production of their expert's report, once that deadline
expired without compliance, the court never set a new one even after
the defendants eventually asked the court to do so.
The court further contributed to delay by taking months
to rule on the parties' motions, which, if promptly decided, would
have moved the case along more expeditiously. For example, the
another defendant never answered the first amended complaint at
all; and the principal defendant had not filed an answer to the
second amended complaint, or sought more time to do so, by the time
the case was dismissed in March 2009, five months after that
complaint had been filed. Nor did the defendants bring to the
court's attention the plaintiffs' failure to produce their expert
report by the original deadline of January 30, 2007, or ask the
court to impose another deadline until November 26, 2008, almost
two years later.
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court never ruled on the plaintiffs' April 2007 request for more
time to finalize their expert's report; took six months to rule on
the defendants' motion for a more definite statement; took seven
months to rule on the defendants' motion to dismiss; and never ruled
on the defendants' November 2008 motion to set a deadline for the
plaintiffs to produce their expert's report.
The court's failure to set deadlines not only contributed
to the case's slow pace but also rendered its ultimate dismissal
order unfair in two respects. First, there was no "clearly
communicated" deadline for producing the plaintiffs' expert report.
See Velázquez Linares v. United States, 546 F.3d 710, 711-12 (1st
Cir. 2008) (acknowledging "'litigants' unflagging duty to comply
with clearly communicated case-management orders'" (quoting Rosario-
Díaz v. Gonzalez, 140 F.3d 312, 315 (1st Cir. 1998)) but vacating
dismissal order based on "uncertainty" of the missed deadline). Once
the original deadline passed and the court failed to set a new
deadline at both sides' requests, the only operative deadline was
the default deadline contained in Rule 26(a)(2)(C)(i), under which
the plaintiffs' expert report was due "at least 90 days before the
date set for trial or for the case to be ready for trial." But
since no trial date was set until six days before trial, it was
impossible for the plaintiffs to comply with that 90-day deadline.
Nor did the plaintiffs have any other way of knowing that trial was
imminent. Despite the relatively long time that had passed since
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the filing of the original complaint, the principal defendant had
not yet answered the second amended complaint. Nor had pretrial
memoranda been filed or a pretrial conference scheduled or held.
Second, the plaintiffs were given no express notice of the
consequences of failure to produce their expert report more
promptly. Although the court included boilerplate language in two
orders stating that "[f]ailure to comply will result in the
imposition of severe sanctions and/or dismissal of the complaint
with prejudice for lack of prosecution pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P.
41(b)," neither of those orders set a deadline for the production
of the plaintiffs' expert report.4 Therefore, those warnings did
not give the plaintiffs "realistic notice" that they faced the harsh
sanction of dismissal with prejudice for failure to produce their
expert report before February 17, 2009, the date when the dismissal
order issued. Malot, 478 F.3d at 45 (so concluding in similar
circumstances). Although prior notice of the consequences is not
always required, Pomales v. Celulares Telefónica, Inc., 342 F.3d 44,
50 n.5 (1st Cir. 2003), "in the absence of such a warning, the
propriety of dismissal 'turns to a considerable extent, on the
knowledge which the circumstances show such party may be taken to
have of the consequences of his own conduct.'" Id. (quoting Link
v. Wabash R.R. Co., 370 U.S. 626, 632 (1962)). As discussed above,
4
Rather, one of them set a deadline for complying with an
order to show cause, which the plaintiffs did on time; and the
other set a deadline for filing the second amended complaint, which
the plaintiffs did, albeit one day after the extended deadline.
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given the lack of notice of the imminence of trial, the plaintiffs
cannot reasonably be deemed to have had notice that their delay in
producing their expert's report would lead to dismissal.
A further consideration weighing against the propriety of
dismissal with prejudice is the absence of evidence--or even any
contention--that the defendants were prejudiced by the delay.
Benitez-Garcia, 468 F.3d at 5. Given that the principal defendant
had not yet answered the second amended complaint and that no
pretrial memoranda had been filed or pretrial conference conducted,
it is doubtful that the defendants (or the court) were any more
ready for trial than the plaintiffs or that, even if the plaintiffs
had produced their expert report more promptly, the trial would have
gone forward on the precipitously announced date.
A final relevant factor is the absence of evidence that
the district court considered the adequacy of lesser sanctions, id.
at 6, such as continuing the trial to a date certain and imposing
monetary sanctions to compensate the defendants for any harm caused
by the continuance, Esposito v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 590 F.3d
72, 80 (1st Cir. 2009), and then setting short deadlines for
production of the expert's report and any other remaining pretrial
events and strictly enforcing them, Velázquez Linares, 546 F.3d at
711-12.
In sum, although the district court was justifiably
unhappy with the plaintiffs' lengthy and unjustified delay in
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producing their expert's report, the court's failure to set a clear
deadline for doing so, to warn the plaintiffs of the consequences
of noncompliance with that deadline, to make findings concerning the
nature of the plaintiffs' conduct and the prejudice to the
defendants, and to consider the adequacy of lesser sanctions renders
the sanction of dismissal with prejudice an abuse of its broad
discretion to manage its caseload. Accordingly, we vacate the
dismissal and remand for further proceedings. Each party shall bear
its own costs.
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