The Better Chancery Practice Blog

Most lawyers propound an interrogatory or two that seek the substance of the other side’s case and what witnesses there are. The query looks something like this:

“State each and every fact, circumstance and event upon which you base the claim in Paragraph 4 of your Complaint for Divorce that the dfendant has been guilty of habitual cruel and inhuman treatment, stating for each the date, time and place of occurrence and each witness thereto.”

Some lawyers, I guess to buy more time, file a response that looks like this:

“Objection. Overbroad and unduly burdensome.”

Or

“Objection:  accord and satisfaction; antenuptial knowledge; arbitration and award; assumption of risk, condonation, connivance, contributory negligence, consent, discharge and bankruptcy, duress, estoppel, failure of consideration, failure to mitigate damages, fraud, illegality, insufficient process, insufficient service of process, injury by fellow servant, laches, lack of capacity to commit the offense, license, payment, pre-existing injuries or damages, provocation, reconciliation, recrimination, reformation, release, res judicata, statute of frauds, statute of limitations, waiver, and any other matter constituting an avoidance or affirmative defense.”

Or, worse:

“Objection.”

Too often these inadequate and lazy objections wind up on a busy judge’s desk, and the judge is called upon to order the lawyer to do what he or she should have done in the first place.

MRCP 33(b)(4) requires that each objection be stated with specificity. In Ford Motor Co. v. Tennin, 960 So.2d 379, 393 (Miss. 2007), the MSSC said that “General objections applicable to each and every interrogatory … are clearly outside the bounds of this rule.”

Not only that, but the rule specifically says that an objection does not necessarily relieve you of the duty to respond. It says that if the request is only partially objectionable, you must state the extent to which it is objectionable and the reason for the partial objection, and then you must proceed to respond to the unobjectionable part.

If you take the position in good faith that you should object to going back through thirty years’ worth of events, then state your objection and state that you are providing the requested information for, say, the past five years because it is the most relevant period, and it is unduly burdensome to go back any further. The specific language of Rule 33(b)(4) requires exectly that.

If you object that your client cannot remember every minute detail, but that you are providing as best you can the dates and identification of the events, say that. Don’t just make a blanket objection.

If you think it’s unreasonable to provide 360 bank statements (that’s 30 years’ worth) because it’s too burdensome, say so, and offer to provide what you think is a reasonable number. That is what the rule contemplates.

So what do you do if you’re confronted with those kinds of objections? Well, you don’t want to get to trial and face the argument that the other side should be able to proceed unfettered because you never asked the court to rule on the objections. I would file a motion to compel and ask the judge to rule on them and set reasonable parameters (I would also make more reasonable requests in the first place, but that’s another story).

I wonder whether all those boilerplate objections that have no conceivable application in chancery are sanctionable. It would be interesting to hear the argument on that.

Tagged: discovery objections, MRCP 33(b)(4)