Meit v. Kondratowicz
| Decision Date | 06 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 1396,1396 |
| Parties | K. DAVID MEIT v. ANETA M. KONDRATOWICZ, ET AL. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Circuit Court for Montgomery County
UNREPORTED
Fader, C.J., Graeff, Harrell, Glenn T., Jr. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Opinion by Fader, C.J.
* This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.
We consider the Circuit Court for Montgomery County's entry of judgment against K. David Meit, the appellant, as a sanction for discovery failings. Mr. Meit contends that his former attorney was entirely to blame for the discovery failings and that the circuit court abused its discretion when it failed to recognize that it could take Mr. Meit's relative lack of fault into account in determining an appropriate sanction. Contrary to the position they took in the circuit court, Aneta M. Kondratowicz and Real Estate Services Systems, LLC ("RESS"), the appellees, now correctly acknowledge that the circuit court could have taken the relative fault of Mr. Meit and his attorney into account. They now argue, however, that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion because it recognized that it could consider relative fault but decided not to do so. Because the circuit court's statements in ruling on the motions for sanctions indicate that the court believed it could not consider the relative fault of Mr. Meit and his former attorney in determining an appropriate sanction, we will vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.
Ms. Kondratowicz and Mr. Meit were co-owners of RESS, with 65 and 35 percent respective ownership shares. In July 2017, Mr. Meit sued Ms. Kondratowicz and three other parties over claims related to RESS.1 In September, Ms. Kondratowicz filed counterclaims, and RESS brought a separate action against Mr. Meit. The circuit court subsequently consolidated the two actions.
The circuit court scheduled the consolidated actions for a ten-day jury trial, to be held in October 2018, and issued a scheduling order that required written discovery to be served by February 15 and completed by April 2, 2018. The scheduling order contained the following warnings:
Mr. Meit filed expert witness designations naming two experts, one of whom was Mr. Meit himself. In November 2017, Ms. Kondratowicz moved to strike the designations on the ground that they did not comply with Rule 2-402. See Md. Rule 2-402(g)(1)(A).
Ms. Kondratowicz filed a motion to dismiss, which the court granted on January 19, 2018. The court granted Mr. Meit leave to file an amended complaint by February 20. After business hours on February 20, Mr. Meit's then-counsel, Mitchell J. Rotbert, deposited an amended complaint in the court's night-box. The following day, Mr. Rotbertlearned that his filings had been rejected because "the case [was] closed."2 Mr. Rotbert later attested that he "spent over an hour" on February 21 unsuccessfully attempting to persuade the clerk to accept the filing. He also attested that he attempted unsuccessfully to reach the circuit court judge's chambers by phone on February 21. In its written opinion imposing sanctions, the court expressed skepticism of that claim. Regardless, after February 21, Mr. Rotbert never again attempted to file the amended complaint. He did, however, mail a service copy of the amended complaint, which Ms. Kondratowicz's counsel, Matthew J. Pavlides, received on February 27.
Throughout the early part of 2018, Mr. Meit failed to participate in discovery. Mr. Rotbert sought, and Mr. Pavlides agreed to, extensions of deadlines to respond to Ms. Kondratowicz's interrogatories and requests for production of documents. No responses were forthcoming.
On March 7, Ms. Kondratowicz filed three motions: (1) a motion to strike Mr. Meit's proposed amended complaint; (2) a motion to dismiss the amended complaint; and (3) a motion for discovery sanctions based on Mr. Meit's failure to respond to outstanding discovery or to provide proper expert designations. The motion for sanctions also asserted—although without a supporting affidavit—that "Mr. Meit ha[d] threatened as a part of this litigation to force Ms. Kondratowicz to spend all of her resources defendinghis allegations against her." As sanctions, Ms. Kondratowicz asked that the court strike Mr. Meit's answer to her counterclaim, enter a default judgment in her favor, bar Mr. Meit from introducing evidence to support any defenses, and order him to pay her reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses incurred in connection with her motion for sanctions.
On March 22, Ms. Kondratowicz filed two additional motions. First, she filed a motion to compel Mr. Meit's deposition, in which she alleged that Mr. Rotbert had failed to provide dates when Mr. Meit could be deposed. Second, Ms. Kondratowicz filed a supplement to her motion to strike Mr. Meit's expert witness designations, in which she asserted that Mr. Meit had taken no action to supplement his designations since she had filed her motion to strike the previous November.
Also on March 22, RESS, which was also represented by Mr. Pavlides, filed a motion for sanctions that substantively duplicated Ms. Kondratowicz's previously filed sanctions motion.
Mr. Meit did not respond to any of these motions. Indeed, the sole filing he made during this period was a notice of service of a subpoena on RESS's bank. Ms. Kondratowicz and RESS filed a joint motion to quash that subpoena. Mr. Meit did not respond.
On April 20, the court held a status hearing. Mr. Rotbert, Mr. Pavlides, and Ms. Kondratowicz all attended; Mr. Meit did not. At the hearing, Mr. Rotbert described his unsuccessful attempt to file the amended complaint two months earlier and acknowledged that Mr. Meit "owe[d] discovery." Mr. Rotbert asserted that his client"ha[d] a great deal of material to produce," and he "suspect[ed]" that he could "get all of that to [Ms. Kondratowicz and RESS] within the week." He also suggested "mov[ing] the pretrial events to a time that [was] more consistent with meeting [the] trial obligation in October," and asked the court to postpone the discovery deadline "so that all discovery [would be] completed at the end of June." Mr. Pavlides objected to any extension.
The court expressed frustration that Mr. Rotbert had cavalierly ignored the scheduling order's requirement that "any modifications must be requested by written motion in advance of the deadline," and suggested that Mr. Rotbert promptly file a motion to amend the scheduling order.
Despite Mr. Rotbert's statement that he thought he could produce discovery "within the week," so far as the record reflects, he never did so.
Mr. Rotbert filed a motion to amend the scheduling order the week after the status hearing. To explain the discovery failures to date, the motion relied primarily on an affidavit from Mr. Rotbert and a letter he had sent to a federal judge in a different case, which Mr. Rotbert attached as an exhibit to his affidavit. In those documents, Mr. Rotbert identified a number of personal and professional issues he contended had interfered with his legal practice in the preceding seven months, including: (1) his niece had "died unexpectedly and inexplicably," which caused him to spend "many weeks arranging and then attending [her] funeral" in Sweden; (2) upon returning to the country, Mr. Rotbert fell seriously ill, "had no energy," and could not work more than four hours a day; (3) his only paralegal, "who had not calendared [Mr. Meit's] case in our case tracking system,"resigned without notice; (4) Mr. Rotbert had been working with two new lawyers at his firm while still "carrying a relatively heavy case-load"; (5) he had been diagnosed with cancer; and (6) he had been operating "from the premise that, because trial in this action [was] scheduled to occur on October 1, 2018, the pretrial schedule should reflect dates that closed discovery closer to trial." As a result, Mr. Rotbert claimed, he had missed the deadline to seek to amend the scheduling order "because of [his] mistaken understanding that the parties had several months to get ready for trial." Mr. Rotbert's explanations did not implicate any conduct of Mr. Meit.
Ms. Kondratowicz and RESS filed an opposition to the motion to amend the scheduling order in which they detailed the discovery failures and urged the court to enter a default judgment or prohibit Mr. Meit from introducing any evidence to oppose their claims.
On May 18, 2018, the court entered orders that: (1) denied Mr. Meit's motion to amend the scheduling order; (2) granted Ms. Kondratowicz's motion to strike Mr. Meit's expert witness designations, her motion for discovery sanctions, and RESS's motion for discovery sanctions; (3) denied as moot Ms. Kondratowicz's motion to strike Mr. Meit's amended complaint, her motion to dismiss the amended complaint, and her and RESS's joint motion to compel Mr. Meit's deposition; and (4) entered judgment by default against Mr. Meit on all of Ms. Kondratowicz's and RESS's claims against him. The court also ordered that the trial...
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