Jones v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co.

• Decision Date: 19 July 1974
• Docket Number: No. 74--211,74--211
• Citation: 297 So.2d 861
• Parties: Carolyn E. JONES and Wayne E. Jones, her husband, Petitioners, v. SEABOARD COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a foreign corporation, Respondent.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 861

297 So.2d 861

Carolyn E. JONES and Wayne E. Jones, her husband, Petitioners, v.SEABOARD COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY, a foreign corporation, Respondent.

No. 74--211.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

July 19, 1974.

John E. Karvonen of Piper & Casler, St. Petersburg, for petitioners.

George D. Lynn, Jr., of Harrison, Greene, Mann, Davenport, Rowe & Stanton, St. Petersburg, for respondent.

McNULTY, Judge.

In this negligence action resulting from a car/train collision plaintiffs/petitioners' attorney attempted to take discovery depositions from the engineer and trainman of the train involved in this accident.At the taking thereof, counsel for both sides got bogged down in argument about petitioners' counsel asking leading questions of the deponents.Counsel for the railroad, when advised by petitioners' counsel that the latter would continue to ask leading questions, thereupon ordered the deponents not to answer any further leading questions at which time petitioners' counsel terminated the taking and sought relief before the circuit judge below.Petitioners now seek certiorari to review the three ensuing rulings by the court: (1) refusal to allow petitioners' counsel to ask leading questions of the railroad's employees in a pretrial discovery deposition, (2) the refusal to rule the deponents improperly refused to answer such leading questions, and (3)the court's consequent denial to award petitioners reasonable expenses incurred as a result of the curtailed depositions.We grant certiorari and quash the orders complained of.

The predicate for the lower court's ruling is found in the following finding:

'The Court finds that the statement of counsel for the plaintiff, that he intended to ask leading questions, constitutes a failure of the plaintiff to conduct the examination of the witnesses . . . 'as permitted at trial,' in accordance with R.C.P. 1.310(c), and further was a failure to act in (good) faith under discovery procedure generally. . . .'

The pertinent provision of Rule 1.310(c) R.C.P., referred to in such finding is as follows:

'(c) Examination and Cross-Examination; Record of Examination; Oath; Objections.Examination and cross-examination of witnesses may proceed As permitted at the trial. . . .'(Italics ours.)

So it is obvious that the court was of the opinion that the phrase 'as permitted at the trial' limited the taker of the deposition as though he was calling the deponent as his own witness at trial.We think that phrase does not have such limiting effect and that a brief review of the history of pretrial discovery will be helpful in construing it otherwise.

To begin with, it's well known that our Rules of Civil Procedure are patterned very closely after the Federal rules, and it has been the practice of the Florida courts closely to examine and analyze the Federal decisions and commentaries under the Federal rules in interpreting ours.¹We do so now and allude, first, to the observations of Professors Wright and Miller in their treatise on Federal Practice and Procedure:²

'. . . The scope of discovery has been made very broad and the restrictions imposed upon it are directed chiefly at the use of, rather than the acquisition of, the information discovered.

'The central notion of discovery practice set out in the rules is that the right to Take statements and the right to Use them in court must be kept entirely distinct.By this method discovery at the pretrial stage is not fettered with the rules of admissibility that apply at a trial, and the utmost freedom is here allowed, but restrictions are imposed on the use of the products of discovery that preserve traditional methods of trial.'(Italics ours.)

Additionally, it's now rudimentary that the primary purpose of pretrial discovery is twofold: (1) to 'discover' evidence relevant and pertinent to the triable issues pending before the court, and (2) if in written form to serve, of itself, as evidence at trial if otherwise admissible.³Moreover, such discovery rules are to be liberally construed to accomplish their purpose.⁴In other words, litigation should no longer proceed as a game of 'blind man's bluff.'

With these observations as a prologue, then, we now point out that the critical phrase of our present Rule 1.310(c), R.C.P., relied upon by the trial court herein and quoted above, has been in our rules from their inception in 1954.⁵It has also been in the Federal rules from their inception, now appearing in Federal rule 30(c).Notwithstanding, we have been unable to find a single case which relies upon it to limit the manner of deposing a witness as did the trial judge here.To impose such limitation would frustrate, we think, the very purpose of the rule and at the same time be inconsistent with other portions of the rules relating to discovery which do promote their purpose.In this latter respect, not unlike statutory construction, it is axiomatic that rules of civil procedure on a given subject are intended to be an intergrated whole in which all provisions relating thereto are to be construed in the light of each other.⁶

In this frame of reference, we find that in the present text of the very rule with which we are here concerned, indeed the very subsection thereof, to wit: 1.310(c), and following the critical phrase before us, the rule provides:

'. . . All objections made at time of the examination . . . to the manner of taking it, or to the evidence presented, or to the conduct of any party and any other objection to the proceedings shall be noted by the officer upon the deposition.Evidence objected to shall be taken subject to the objections. . . .'(Italics ours.)

...