Plaintiff was alleging fraud here so discovery process was very large/required a lot of discovery.  The district court didn’t impose any sanctions.  The district court totally ignored the defendant here, and the defendant didn’t disclose anything.  This case got remanded back to a district court from the appellate court.  Sequence of this case:

  1. Plaintiff sent a ridiculous amount of broad interrogatories.
  2. Defendant objected to the interrogatory under Rule 33(b).
  3. This was the correct response, but it got no attention from the court.
  4. Court never responded to this objection/defendant should have filed for a 26(c) protective order.
  5. Defendant then filed a motion to dismiss the fraud claim.  This should have been their original response.
  6. Court didn’t rule on this either.
  7. Defendant then wanted a protective order 26(c) for non-sharing, which means that if this info had to be introduced, it was not to be shared with the world.
  8. Then defendant entered self-help mode and withheld discovery.
  9. Plaintiff’s then filed a 37(a) motion to compel.
  10. This motion granted by the court.
  11. Defendant couldn’t deliver on time, and plaintiff filed a 37(b) sanction.
  12. Judge then gave harshest sanction to defendant, default judgment.
  13. Appellate court remanded to a new district judge.