Carson v. City of Fort Lauderdale, s. 5407
| Decision Date | 07 April 1965 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 5407,5409,s. 5407 |
| Citation | 173 So.2d 743 |
| Parties | Arthur G. CARSON and Myrtis E. Carson, et al., Appellants, v. The CITY OF FORT LAUDERDALE, a municipal corporation of the State of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Carl V. Wisner, Jr., Ft. Lauderdale, for appellants.
C. Shelby Dale, City Atty., and James E. Edwards, Asst. City Atty., Ft. Lauderdale, for appellee.
This is an interlocutory appeal filed by plaintiff-appellants seeking review of a pretrial order of the circuit court sustaining objections to interrogatories and requests for admissions propounded by the plaintiffs in this action in equity.
The defendant-City was served with 205 written interrogatories and 59 requests for admissions. The objections to both the interrogatories and requests for admissions were identical, and were phrased as follows:
'1. The Requests are absurdly onerous and burdensome.
'2. The Requests call for numerous admissions of fact, mixed with conclusions of law, statements of ultimate fact, matters within the knowledge exclusively of the Plaintiffs, technical and scientific research and conclusions, and require an enormous amount of research.
'3. It is not clear whether the time period stated is the period to answer or the period when the facts were supposed to be true.
'4. The Defendant has already fully answered the complaint under the rules.
'5. The Requests go far beyond simple statements of fact and admissions of documents and require elaborate and complicated conclusions which are the province of the Chancellor, after hearing all the evidence. * * *
'6. Plaintiffs are seeking to cast most the entire burden of proving their case on the Defendant.
On the basis of the above and an accompanying affidavit of an assistant city engineer to the effect that answers to the interrogatories and requests would require a considerable amount of research and expense, the trial court found all of the inquiries to be improper. The order rested largely on Objection Number 2, supra. It was enterd without prejudice to the plaintiffs proposing other interrogatories. This appeal followed.
It is well recognized that in matters was entered without prejudice to the plaintiffs with wide discretion, and their treatment of problems arising thereunder ordinarily will not be disturbed. Charles Sales Corp. v. Rovenger, Fla.1956, 88 So.2d 551. Equally well recognized, however, is that the burden of proving the validity of objections is upon the objecting party. Id.
The extent of this burden has not been developed in Florida case law, but in view of the fact that the federal rules dealing with interrogatories and requests for admissions are almost identical with our state rules pertaining to such inquiries, decisions of the federal courts, as well as comments by text writers on the federal rules, are in point. Accordingly, we look to them in ascertaining the application of our state rules, i. e., Rules 1.27 and 1.30, Fla.R.Civ.P., 30 F.S.A.
With respect to objections to interrogatories, Professor Moore, in his work on federal practice, 4 Moore, Federal Practice, § 33.27, at 2336 (2d ed. 1963), has this to say:
'Objections to interrogatories must be sufficiently specific that the court may, in considering such objections with interrogatories propounded, ascertain therefrom their claimed objectionable character; general objections to interrogatories, as that they will require the party served to make research and compile data, or that they are unreasonably burdensome, oppressive and vexatious, or that they seek information which is easily available to the interrogating party as to the objecting party, or that they would cause annoyance, expense, and...
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...court decisions to illuminate our rule. E.g. Shooster v. Gelfand, 439 So.2d 1000, 1001 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983); Carson v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 173 So.2d 743, 744 (Fla. 2d DCA 1965). Here, Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.220(d) adopts, for taking depositions, the procedure which is prov......
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