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    1. Phillip Carter, an African American professor at Marshall University, sued the University of West Virginia System Board of Trustees alleging racial discrimination. 2. Carter repeatedly failed to respond to the Board's discovery requests and comply with court orders, even after being personally warned twice by the district court that his case could be dismissed. 3. The district court dismissed Carter's case without prejudice under Rule 37 for failure to permit or provide discovery. The appeals court affirmed, finding that Carter demonstrated bad faith and that lesser sanctions had proven ineffective, so the district court did not abuse its discretion.

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    United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

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    1. Phillip Carter, an African American professor at Marshall University, sued the University of West Virginia System Board of Trustees alleging racial discrimination. 2. Carter repeatedly failed to respond to the Board's discovery requests and comply with court orders, even after being personally warned twice by the district court that his case could be dismissed. 3. The district court dismissed Carter's case without prejudice under Rule 37 for failure to permit or provide discovery. The appeals court affirmed, finding that Carter demonstrated bad faith and that lesser sanctions had proven ineffective, so the district court did not abuse its discretion.

    Original Description:

    Filed: 1994-05-16 Precedential Status: Precedential Citations: 23 F.3d 400 Docket: 93-1905

    Original Title

    Philip W. Carter, Jr. v. University of West Virginia System, Board of Trustees, a State Corporation (A Successor State Corporation to the West Virginia Board of Regents), 23 F.3d 400, 4th Cir. (1994)

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    1. Phillip Carter, an African American professor at Marshall University, sued the University of West Virginia System Board of Trustees alleging racial discrimination. 2. Carter repeatedly failed to respond to the Board's discovery requests and comply with court orders, even after being personally warned twice by the district court that his case could be dismissed. 3. The district court dismissed Carter's case without prejudice under Rule 37 for failure to permit or provide discovery. The appeals court affirmed, finding that Carter demonstrated bad faith and that lesser sanctions had proven ineffective, so the district court did not abuse its discretion.

    Copyright:

    Public Domain
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf
    24 views5 pages

    United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

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    1. Phillip Carter, an African American professor at Marshall University, sued the University of West Virginia System Board of Trustees alleging racial discrimination. 2. Carter repeatedly failed to respond to the Board's discovery requests and comply with court orders, even after being personally warned twice by the district court that his case could be dismissed. 3. The district court dismissed Carter's case without prejudice under Rule 37 for failure to permit or provide discovery. The appeals court affirmed, finding that Carter demonstrated bad faith and that lesser sanctions had proven ineffective, so the district court did not abuse its discretion.

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    of 5

    23 F.

    3d 400
    NOTICE: Fourth Circuit I.O.P. 36.6 states that citation of unpublished
    dispositions is disfavored except for establishing res judicata, estoppel, or the law
    of the case and requires service of copies of cited unpublished dispositions of the
    Fourth Circuit.

    Philip W. CARTER, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant,


    v.
    UNIVERSITY OF WEST VIRGINIA SYSTEM, Board of
    Trustees, a
    state corporation (a successor state corporation
    to the West Virginia Board of Regents),
    Defendant-Appellee.
    No. 93-1905.

    United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit


    Argued: April 11, 1994.
    Decided: May 16, 1994.

    Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of
    West Virginia, at Huntington. Robert J. Staker, District Judge. (CA-911036-3)
    David Meshach Fryson, Dunbar, West Virginia, for Appellant.
    Paul L. Weber, Shuman, Annand & Poe, Charleston, West Virginia, for
    Appellee.
    Charles R. Bailey, Shuman, Annand & Poe, Charleston, West Virginia,
    for Appellee.
    S.D.W.Va.
    AFFIRMED.
    Before RUSSELL and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, and TURK, United
    States District Judge for the Western District of Virginia, sitting by
    designation.

    OPINION
    PER CURIAM:

    In October 1991, Phillip W. Carter filed this lawsuit alleging that from 1986 to
    1991, the Board of Trustees of the University of West Virginia (the Board)
    discriminated against him on the basis of his race. Carter, an African-American
    male, was hired in September 1980 by the Board to teach social work classes at
    Marshall University, and continues to teach there. Carter's lawsuit alleged that
    because of his race the Board engaged in a pattern or practice of harassment
    and humiliation, refused to promote him while promoting less qualified, less
    senior faculty, failed to provide him adequate staff and resources to carry out
    his work, and treated him differently than other members of the social work
    faculty.

    On August 10, 1992, after the parties had agreed to a joint extension of time for
    discovery, the Board served Carter with interrogatories, requests for production
    of documents, and requests for admission. Carter failed to respond to these
    discovery requests, even after the Board reminded him that the responses were
    due and offered him additional time. The Board filed a Motion to Compel on
    September 24, 1992, and the motion was granted by the district court on
    October 6, 1992. Upon Carter's failure to respond, the Board filed a Motion to
    Dismiss on October 20, 1992. Carter had still not responded by November 16,
    1992, when the district court held a hearing on the Board's motion. The district
    court denied the Board's motion but ordered Carter, who was present in the
    courtroom, to respond to the discovery, and emphasized that if he again failed
    to respond timely to discovery requests, his case would be dismissed.

    After the November hearing, the parties, at the direction of the district court,
    discussed possible dates for Carter's deposition. On December 2, 1992, the
    Board served Carter with a Notice of Deposition for January 26 and 27, 1993.
    Carter failed to appear at the deposition and, finding that his excuse--that he
    could not find a ride--was unjustified and evidenced bad faith, the Board filed a
    second Motion to Dismiss. A hearing on this motion was held on February 25,
    1993. The district court denied the motion to dismiss but awarded the Board its
    costs. Again, the district court admonished Carter personally that further
    difficulties and noncompliance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure would
    result in dismissal of his case.

    In March and April, the Board took Carter's deposition over a period of six
    days. On March 12, 1993, the Board served Carter with a second set of

    interrogatories and requests for production, primarily following up on matters


    mentioned in his deposition. Carter testified that he faxed handwritten answers
    to the interrogatories to his attorney on April 22, but his attorney said that he
    could not make much sense of the answers and told him they would need to
    meet and discuss the answers. Failing to receive Carter's responses, on April 26,
    1993, the Board filed its third Motion to Dismiss. A hearing was held on this
    motion on May 28, 1993, and the district court dismissed the case without
    prejudice. Carter challenges that dismissal in this appeal.*
    5

    Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that if a party fails to
    permit or provide discovery, the court may, among other sanctions, dismiss the
    case. We review dismissals under Rule 37 for abuse of discretion. National
    Hockey League v. Metropolitan Hockey Club, Inc., 427 U.S. 639, 642 (1976).
    The legal standard for dismiss als under Rule 37 is virtually the same as that for
    dismissals for failure to prosecute under Rule 41. In Hillig v. Commissioner,
    916 F.2d 171, 174 (4th Cir.1990), we described four factors to be considered
    before dismissal for failure to prosecute:

    6 the plaintiff's degree of personal responsibility; (2) the amount of prejudice


    (1)
    caused the defendant; (3) the presence of a drawn out history of deliberately
    proceeding in a dilatory fashion; and (4) the effectiveness of sanctions less drastic
    than dismissal.
    7

    While the district court clearly has the authority to dismiss complaints, we have
    advised that this authority should be exercised with restraint and " '[a]gainst the
    power to prevent delays must be weighed the sound public policy of deciding
    cases on their merits.' " Dove v. CODESCO, 569 F.2d 807, 810 (4th Cir.1978)
    (quoting Reizakis v. Loy, 490 F.2d 1132, 1135 (4th Cir.1974)). Although
    dismissal is usually inappropriate to penalize a blameless client for an attorney's
    behavior, Hillig, 916 F.2d at 174, the fact that the dismissal adversely affects
    the legal rights of the client does not in itself negate the power. Link v. Wabash
    R.R., 370 U.S. 626, 633 (1962).

    Carter's first contention is that he did not intentionally or deliberately fail to


    comply with the discovery process. He asserts that the record does not support
    the finding of a history of wilfulness, bad faith, or fault on his part. Second,
    Carter argues that the district court wrongly held him responsible for the fault
    of his attorney. According to Carter, he tried to answer the interrogatories to the
    best of his ability and it was due to his inability to communicate with his
    attorney that the answers he provided to his attorney were not sent to the Board.
    Carter analogizes his case to the sloppiness and lack of communication in
    Hillig, which we held was due primarily to the attorneys and did not warrant

    dismissal of the action. Third, Carter urges that the district court should have
    applied a less drastic sanction than dismissal of Carter's case. Finally, Carter
    alleges that the district court failed to make a finding that the Board was
    prejudiced by his lack of compliance with discovery requests, and that given
    the ongoing nature of the discovery and the unfairness of the Board's requests,
    there could not have been any finding of prejudice.
    9

    We reject in all respects Carter's characterization of his conduct in this case. His
    repeated noncompliance with discovery requests, even after two separate
    personal cautions from the district court that his case would be dismissed if he
    failed to comply with discovery, clearly demonstrates Carter's own bad faith.
    The record also shows that the Board was prejudiced in its efforts to defend
    against Carter's allegations by his conduct, as the district court recognized in
    stating "[t]he defendants have been dragged through enough here." (J.A. at
    184.) The district court's efforts to obtain compliance through lesser sanctions,
    such as its award of costs to the Board after the February hearing, obviously
    proved ineffective.

    10

    As we observed in Davis v. Williams, 588 F.2d 69, 71 (4th Cir.1978), district


    courts have crowded dockets and "[a]ppropriate sanctions must be available to
    prevent [their] work from being impeded by the type of conduct disclosed by
    this record." We also quoted the Supreme Court's statement that

    11 most severe in the spectrum of sanctions provided by statute or rule must be


    [T]he
    available to the district court in appropriate cases, not merely to penalize those
    whose conduct may be deemed to warrant such a sanction, but to deter those who
    might be tempted to such conduct in the absence of such a deterrent.
    12

    Id. (quoting National Hockey League, 427 U.S. at 643). We conclude that, in
    the circumstances of this case, the district court did not abuse its discretion in
    applying the extreme sanction of dismissal. Accordingly, the district court's
    dismissal of Carter's claim is affirmed.
    AFFIRMED

    Although the order of dismissal was without prejudice, the finality requirement
    of 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291 (1988), is met because the time period for filing Carter's
    Title VII action had run by the time the case was dismissed. See Gray v.
    Fidelity Acceptance Corp., 634 F.2d 226, 227 (5th Cir.1981) (when dismissal
    without prejudice is handed down after the statute of limitations has run, the

    dismissal is a final order for purposes of appeal); Bragg v. Reed, 592 F.2d
    1136, 1139 (10th Cir.1979) (when dismissal effectively extinguishes cause of
    action and plaintiff may not start over again, it is a final, appealable order)

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