Carnes v. Ford
Decision Date | 06 October 2021 |
Docket Number | No. 1D20-3772,1D20-3772 |
Citation | 324 So.3d 1290 (Mem) |
Parties | Briana CARNES and Maruti Fleet & Mgmt., LLC, Petitioners, v. Sommer FORD, Respondent. |
Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Scott A. Cole from Cole, Scott, & Kissane, P.A., Miami, for Petitioners.
Brian J. Lee from Morgan & Morgan, Jacksonville, for Respondent.
DENIED . See Allstate Ins. Co. v. Boecher , 733 So. 2d 993 (Fla. 1999) ; see also Dodgen v. Grijalva , 281 So. 3d 490 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019), rev. granted , No. SC19-1118, 2019 WL 4805833 (Fla. Oct. 1, 2019) ( ) & Younkin v. Blackwelder , ––– So. 3d ––––, 2019 WL 847548 (Fla. 5th DCA), rev. granted , No. SC19-385, 2019 WL 2180625 (same).
The petitioners fail to establish a jurisdictional basis for their requested relief. I would dismiss, rather than deny, the petition.
For relief the petitioners ask that we quash the trial court's order overruling their objections to several expert witness interrogatories and ordering that they respond. Those interrogatories asked the petitioners to provide certain information regarding any expert witness they anticipated calling to testify at trial, which could be summarized as follows:
The petitioners did not respond at all to any of the requests in question. Instead, they demurred, arguing that these requests sought information beyond what the discovery rules allowed; sought privileged attorney-client communications; sought their attorneys' work product; and sought privileged information of non-parties. The petitioners added that any responsive information was "not readily available," so "compliance" with any of these objectionable requests would be "oppressive and unduly burdensome." As bases for invoking our certiorari jurisdiction, however, they limit their contentions to burdensomeness, overbreadth, and the statutory privacy rights of unidentified non-parties; the petitioners do not rely on a violation of the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine as a jurisdictional basis. And this is the salient problem with the petition.
Under the civil rules, interrogatories may be directed to a party , and the party must answer those interrogatories based on information available to the party . See Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.340(a) ; cf. Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.280(b)(5)(A)(i) ( ). There is no requirement that the party, before answering the interrogatories, hunt down knowledge that the party does not already have. If the party does not know the answer (or, if the party is a business entity, does not have internal access to information from which to derive the answer), the party has no obligation to start asking non-parties for help. It is okay instead for the party simply to say, under penalty of perjury, "I don't know." The trial court's order does not appear to foreclose this response or a similar one (if true) for any interrogatory to which it applies. The order just overrules the petitioners' objections.
In turn, none of those objections that the petitioners ask us to consider here points to the type of harm that is cognizable as a basis for certiorari jurisdiction. On the one hand, the burdensomeness or irrelevance of discovery alone certainly cannot support that jurisdiction. Cf. Rodriguez v. Miami-Dade County , 117 So. 3d 400, 405 (Fla. 2013) ( ); Bd. of Trs. of Internal Improvement Tr. Fund v. Am. Educ. Enters., LLC , 99 So. 3d 450, 456–57 (Fla. 2012) ( ); Allstate Ins. Co. v. Langston , 655 So. 2d 91, 94 (Fla. 1995) ( ); Martin-Johnson, Inc. v. Savage , 509 So. 2d 1097, 1100 (Fla. 1987) ( ); see also Allstate Ins. Co. v. Boecher , 733 So. 2d 993, 1000 (Fla. 1999) ( ).
On the other hand, the petitioners do not identify a statutory privilege or some other fundamental right that either of them hold (instead of one held by a non-party* ) that would be violated by the trial court's order they ask us to review. Cf. Martin-Johnson , 509 So. 2d at 1099 (reaffirming distinction between discovery orders violative of the rules of evidence and "those that violate fundamental rights causing harm that cannot be remedied on appeal" (citing Kilgore v. Bird , 149 Fla. 570, 6 So. 2d...
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