Taking as Admitted … or not
September 18, 2017 § Leave a comment
Ursel Williams sued her husband, Wayne Williams, for separate maintenance after he left her. In the course of litigation, Wayne propounded R 36 requests for admission (RFA’s), most of which went to the merits of Ursel’s claims. Ursel never responded, and Wayne moved at trial for the chancellor to take the requests as admitted. She refused. Wayne appealed the judge’s grant of separate maintenance and raised in his appeal the issue of the chancellor’s refusal to take the admissions as admitted.
In Williams v. Williams, decided August 22, 2017, the COA affirmed. Judge Lee wrote for a 7 1/2 -1 1/2 court (Judge Wilson joined the dissent “in part”):
¶7. Rule 36 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure governs requests for admissions. The rule states, in pertinent part, that a matter will be deemed admitted if the party upon whom the request was served does not timely respond or file an objection addressed to the matter. M.R.C.P. 36(a). A timely response equates to one being made within thirty days. See id. Thereafter, the matter is conclusively established unless the court permits the admission’s withdrawal or amendment. M.R.C.P. 36(b). “A matter that is deemed admitted does not require further proof.” Locklear v. Sellers, 126 So. 3d 978, 981 (¶7) (Miss. Ct. App. 2013). Still, while “Rule 36 is to be applied as written, . . . ‘it is not intended to be applied in Draconian fashion.’” In re Dissolution of Marriage of Leverock & Hamby, 23 So. 3d 424, 432 (¶28) (Miss. 2009) (quoting DeBlanc v. Stancil, 814 So. 2d 796, 801-02 (¶26) (Miss. 2002)). Specifically, “[a] certain amount of discretion is vested in the [chancellor] with respect to whether he or she will take matters as admitted.” Earwood v. Reeves, 798 So. 2d 508, 514 (¶19) (Miss. 2001) (citation omitted).
¶8. The problem here is that the admissions produced contradictory results. Some of the requests asked Ursel to admit that: the separation was her fault, Wayne did not refuse to support her, and Wayne did not abandon her. However, another request asked Ursel to admit that “there is no significant conduct on [y]our part that negatively impacts the enjoyment of the marriage contract.” Ursel obviously admitted to this statement in her untimely response. As such, we fail to see how the matter could be conclusively established as Wayne argues; thus, it was within the chancellor’s discretion to rely on the trial testimony to resolve any conflicts. Furthermore, the chancellor recognized that it was within her discretion to review the reason for Ursel’s failure to timely answer the requests for admissions. The chancellor found the delay of thirty-three days was not “critical,” and we can find no abuse of discretion in this instance. The dissent states that Wayne’s requests for admissions were deemed
admitted for Ursel’s failure to timely reply and that the contradictory admission does not encompass the essential elements of Ursel’s separate-maintenance claim. However, the dissent concedes that it is within the chancellor’s discretion whether to take matters as admitted. In this instance, we cannot find error by the chancellor.
Nothing earthshaking here.
In child custody cases, RFA’s may not be relied upon by the chancellor as the body of proof. And here is another post (with the same title) on the point.
It’s important to keep in mind that you shouldn’t send RFA’s out to do the bulk of the heavy lifting in your case. They aren’t designed to do that. As the court has said, the purpose of the request for admission under Rule 36 is “to determine which facts are not in dispute . … It is not intended to be used as a vehicle to escape adjudication of the facts by means of artifice or happenstance.” DeBlanc v. Stancil, 814 So. 2d 796, 802 (Miss. 2002).
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