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Only Party Who Propounded Discovery Requests Is Entitled To Seek Sanctions For Failure To RespondWarehime v. Dell, 124 Md. App. 31, 720 A.2d 1196 (1998) Plaintiffs, husband and wife, brought suit against nine members of a volunteer company of fire fighters, based on the Company’s decision to remove them from their positions at the Company. The trial court dismissed the entire suit because the plaintiffs failed to respond to interrogatories propounded by one of the nine defendants. The Court held that the trial judge erred in dismissing the Complaint as to the remaining eight defendants, who did not propounded interrogatories to plaintiffs. The Court rejected to argument that because all nine defendants had an identical interest in uncovering the information sought by one defendant through his interrogatories, they were all entitled to move for sanctions and to obtain a dismissal of the case because of the discovery violation. The Court acknowledged that, as a matter of tactics, counsel representing multiple defendants will often propound discovery in the name of only one defendant, to keep additional interrogatories in his or her discovery "arsenal". But here, counsel was hoisted on his own petard. Only one defendant was a "discovering party" under Maryland Rule 2-433(a), and by the plain language of the Rule, only that party was entitled to sanctions. |
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