Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation
- Thomas Hixson
- 3:15-cv-02726
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Amanda Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Judge Hixson denied Jones’s sanctions motion seeking deposition costs incurred after a discovery deadline.
Amanda Jones’s request for reimbursement from the defendants was denied; the defendants were not required to pay the $7,606.29 in deposition expenses.
What happened
In Amanda Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Amanda Jones noticed depositions of four treating physicians shortly before trial, about a year after the court-ordered deadline for completing expert depositions.
The defendants objected that the depositions were late. The court sustained those objections to using the depositions at trial. Jones then sought $7,606.29 for the witness, video, and transcription costs, arguing that defense counsel had contributed to the problem.
The court denied the sanctions motion. It held that Jones violated the scheduling order, that the deadline could be changed only with the court’s consent, and that the defendants’ conduct did not shift responsibility for the costs. Judge Hixson signed the order.
The detailed version
- Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation · No. 3:15-cv-02726
- Thomas Hixson
- Mar. 30, 2023
Background
The court had entered a scheduling order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16. The order set deadlines for discovery, including expert depositions. After several extensions, the parties stipulated—and the court ordered—that expert depositions had to be completed by March 25, 2022.
In February and March 2023, approximately 11 or 12 months after that deadline, Jones noticed depositions of four treating physicians shortly before the scheduled March 13, 2023 trial. The defendants promptly objected, including on the ground that the depositions were untimely. The parties disputed whether defense counsel had said he would agree to proceed if the court allowed the physicians to testify by video conference. The court was not told about that dispute before the depositions went forward.
The day before trial, the defendants again objected to the depositions. The court agreed that they were untimely under the scheduling order and sustained the objections to using them at trial. Two treating physicians ultimately testified by video conference. The court excluded a third because she could not provide a sufficient causal link between her treatment and Jones’s injury, and Jones did not call the fourth physician.
Motion and Arguments
Jones moved for sanctions seeking $7,606.29 in witness fees and video and transcription costs for the four depositions. She argued that defense counsel had unfairly caused her to incur those expenses and that the defendants should pay them.
The defendants’ counsel disputed Jones’s account of their conversation. The court assumed for purposes of analysis that Jones’s version was correct. Even under that assumption, the court found that Jones incurred the costs while the defendants’ objections remained unresolved and therefore took a known risk.
Court’s Analysis
Rule 16 requires a scheduling order to limit the time for completing discovery, and Rule 16 permits sanctions when a party or attorney fails to obey a scheduling or other pretrial order. A scheduling order may be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s consent. No one asked the court to extend the expert-deposition deadline beyond March 25, 2022.
The court rejected the idea that labeling the depositions as trial depositions removed them from the scheduling order. It explained that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the district’s local rules do not distinguish between discovery depositions and depositions intended for use at trial when applying discovery deadlines. Allowing parties to avoid those deadlines merely by labeling a deposition for trial use would undermine the court’s ability to manage its docket.
The court concluded that Jones violated the scheduling order by taking the depositions after the deadline. The defendants’ decision to attend while preserving their objections might have been a tactical mistake, but it did not make the rule violation disappear. The court also concluded that Jones, rather than the defendants, was responsible for violating the scheduling order and could not shift the resulting expenses to them.
Disposition
The court denied Jones’s motion for sanctions.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.