Ransom v. Andrews

Background

Christopher Ransom sent the court a letter seeking an order compelling C.O. Andrews to respond to Ransom’s interrogatories and requests for production under Local Civil Rule 33.2. Ransom particularly identified Request No. 8.

Request No. 8 sought identification and production of documents concerning employment-related administrative, civil, or criminal proceedings in which a defendant had been formally counseled, disciplined, punished, prosecuted, or subjected to other remedial action for failing to make a report or making a false statement.

Andrews sent the court a response letter attaching his previously served discovery responses. Those responses objected to Request No. 8 as vague, ambiguous, overbroad, irrelevant, compound, and implicating privacy and several privileges. The responses also stated, based on information and belief, that no employment-related proceeding had occurred that fit the request’s description.

Court’s Ruling

Judge Barbara Moses observed that Andrews had answered the interrogatories and document requests, including Request No. 8, but had not answered them under oath. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Local Civil Rule 33.2 form require interrogatory answers to be provided under oath.

The court ordered Andrews to serve properly signed and sworn Local Civil Rule 33.2 interrogatory answers no later than 30 days after the date of the order. The opinion does not state that the court ruled on the substance of Andrews’s objections to Request No. 8.

Classification and Effect

This is a procedural discovery order. It required Andrews to correct the form of his discovery answers; it did not decide the underlying claims or defenses described in the opinion. The order directly affected Andrews by requiring him to serve signed and sworn answers, and it addressed Ransom’s request for compelled discovery.