Negrete v. National R.R. Passenger Corp.
| Decision Date | 27 October 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-3287.,07-3287. |
| Parties | Jorge NEGRETE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION (Amtrak), Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Joseph E. Tighe (argued), Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Diane I. Jennings (argued), Susan K. Laing, Anderson, Rasor & Partners, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee.
Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and SYKES, Circuit Judges.
Jorge Negrete, a former track-repair worker for Amtrak, hurt his back when he fell off a welding truck. He sued Amtrak, alleging that the injury had left him permanently disabled and unable to work. The district court, however, dismissed his case after determining that Negrete had intentionally flouted discovery deadlines, hidden and tampered with evidence, and lied in his deposition. We affirm, and because it appears that Negrete may have committed perjury, we refer this opinion to the United States Attorney.
Negrete's litigation conduct in this case can only be described as appalling. The problems began when Amtrak tried to investigate the allegations in Negrete's lawsuit. Understandably, it sought to answer two questions: how badly Negrete was injured, and whether he was still able to work. To shed light on the first question, it asked Negrete for the name of each doctor who had seen him for his injury. Negrete provided only the names of the doctors whose findings helped his case, withholding the names of two who had concluded that he was not permanently injured and was able to work. He also neglected to mention the name of a third doctor, who had performed an MRI on him.
With the exception of the MRI, which Amtrak was unable to locate for almost a year, Amtrak wasn't prejudiced by Negrete's deceit; it already knew about all but one of the undisclosed doctors. But because Negrete's incomplete answers left the impression that it wasn't getting the whole story, Amtrak tried to obtain copies of the medical records kept by the Railroad Retirement Board ("RRB"). Once again the investigation was thwarted. Amtrak requested a copy of the file from Negrete (the RRB will only disclose medical records to a patient), who responded by delivering 12 pages. Amtrak couldn't believe that the 12 pages were a complete record, so it moved to compel production, after which Negrete eventually turned over 236 pages. These included a never-before-disclosed report by an RRB physician, who disagreed with a prior doctor's conclusion that Negrete couldn't work. Strangely, however, the supposedly complete 236-page file did not contain the 12 pages Negrete had originally produced. Tired of these shenanigans, the court ordered Negrete to obtain a sealed copy of his RRB file and to submit that file, unopened, for inspection. He eventually turned over an envelope purporting to be the file, but the envelope had been opened—twice—leaving the court to speculate that he had once again tampered with the file.
In addition to investigating the seriousness of Negrete's injury, Amtrak also tried to assess whether Negrete was still able to work, inquiring about all the sources of Negrete's postaccident income. Once again it was thwarted. At a deposition Negrete initially testified that he had no income apart from the money he received from Amtrak. When asked specifically whether he owned any property, however, he admitted owning one apartment building with two tenants, each of whom paid him $450 per month, but stated that he did not own any other buildings. Both of these responses turned out to be false. Negrete's 2002 through 2005 tax returns revealed that he had at least $160,000 in income from three apartment buildings. And his rental receipt booklets—whose existence he initially denied—indicated that he received not $450 per month but $650 per month from his rentals. (Adding to the impression that Negrete was hiding income were a number of loan applications on which Negrete claimed to...
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