McGill v. Ford Motor Company Hinds County, Mississippi

Middleton v. Cooper Tire & Rubber Company Hampton County, South Carolina

“The Court is deeply disturbed that Cooper Tire’s conduct from the commencement of this case has reflected a pattern of deliberate discovery abuse, including misrepresentations, obfuscation, concealment, and disobedience to the discovery orders of this Court . . .”

“[T]he Court finds that Cooper Tire did not permit the plant inspection within the court-ordered time frame despite repeated requests. Cooper Tire also sent a letter incorrectly claiming plaintiffs had not timely requested the inspection, when they had requested it twice. Cooper Tire then represented that the tire wasn’t currently scheduled for production so as to indefinitely delay the inspection the Court ordered under circumstances causing the Court to suspect that representation was not true.  Cooper Tire also left plaintiffs with no choice but to file a motion for sanctions to force the defendant to do what the Court had previously ordered, and only after the plaintiffs’ motion for sanctions was filed did Cooper Tire allow the Court ordered inspection to go forward.”

[W]hat is most troubling to the Court is that, had plaintiffs not been persistent in their request to view the other area [of Cooper’s plant], neither they nor the Court would have discovered that Cooper Tire was concealing at least 33 tires returned for separations in violation of this Court’s order. In other words, Cooper Tire was concealing more failed tires which were responsive to the Court’s order than it actually produced. . . . Cooper Tire’s willlful action of concealing this evidence from plaintiffs’ counsel and their consultant is indefensible.

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“In addition to responsive pre-existing paper ‘documents,’ plaintiffs also presented compelling evidence that Cooper Tire has intentionally withheld, again in violation of this Court’s order, documents that discuss the specifics of tires returned for separation failures and which are stored on Cooper Tire’s computer system.”

“This pervasive pattern of misrepresentations by Cooper Tire to the Court and opposing counsel is more than disturbing and cannot be tolerated in our legal system.”

“The conduct of Cooper Tire demonstrates that Cooper Tire is not bound by the truth and will make whatever representation it believes is expedient to oppose the requested discovery regardless of the truth of such representations.”

“Cooper Tire suggests this scenario: Even though the requests for production and interrogatories specifically request information, and even though this Court’s order on the motion to compel requires the production of this precise information, Cooper Tire does not have to provide it until plaintiffs discover Cooper Tire has not produced it. Then upon plaintiffs’ discovery, plaintiffs should not move for sanctions but should, instead, tell Cooper Tire what plaintiffs have discovered Cooper Tire is withholding in violation of the court order. Then Cooper Tire can produce what plaintiffs have caught it hiding and thus avoid ever being subject to sanctions for violating this Court’s orders. The Court categorically rejects any such suggestion, as it would defeat the purposes of the discovery rules and reward, rather than punish, discovery abusers. . . .”

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Cooper Tire engaged upon a course of conduct exhibiting an attitude that it does not have to provide documents or even the barest information about them unless and until plaintiffs discover from other sources that they exist.

“[T]he Whitaker court sanctioned Cooper Tire for destroying documents.

Referring to “adjustment data” and “warranty claims documents” which plaintiffs’ counsel had requested, the Court found that “these documents were never produced by Cooper Tire and that the representations to the contrary made by its attorneys to this Court were material and false.”

“The fact that Cooper Tire withheld documents, but misled the Court in representing that it had, in fact, furnished them, is further evidence of just how far Cooper is willing to go to rape discovery requirements.”

“To say that Cooper has abused the discovery process in making or resisting discovery would be an understatement.”

“[T]he Court finds Cooper’s course of conduct to be one of knowing concealment regarding requested documents in other cases unless and until those cases are discovered by plaintiffs’ counsel through other sources.”

“This court is of the opinion that the discovery abuses of Cooper Tire are systemic.”

Rhodes v. Cooper Tire and Rubber Company Hinds County, Mississippi

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“In Brownlee/Whitaker, it was not until a hearing on the plaintiff’s motion seeking sanctions against Cooper that it produced even part of the documents that were responsive to plaintiff’s discovery requests . . .”

“It was not until a similar sanctions hearing in Salas that Cooper’s counsel provided plaintiffs’ counsel, just before the judge took the bench, with an envelope purportedly containing the non-redacted discovery documents that had been ordered by the court to be produced.”

“In McGill, as well as in [Rhodes], Cooper said that it would produce in discovery adjustment data for tires of common green specs. Yet, it required a motion to compel in McGill for Cooper to even respond that the data had already been provided.  It had not. Cooper, at a sanction hearing in this court, announced that it was a mistake. Cooper had people scurrying around and collecting the data as this Court was in session considering sanctions.”

“Cooper castigates plaintiff’s counsel and the court in Middleton, but within his thirty-six page order, Judge Goode notes that Cooper engaged in a ‘willful attempt to conceal possibly damaging, material evidence when it withheld thirty-three common green claims tires and related documents in violation of the court’s earlier order, a discovery violation that would not have been ‘discovered’ but for the court granting, over Cooper’s objection, inspection of Cooper’s Albany, Georgia plant facilities by plaintiffs’ counsel.”

“The Salas court in Texas found that Cooper Tire, even after being ordered to produce documents, wrongfully redacted documents and withheld information from the plaintiffs in that case, and sanctioned Cooper Tire $25,000 for each day that the non-redacted documents were not produced. These discovery abuses were not merely ‘alleged’ as Cooper argues. They were adjudicated.”

“Notwithstanding its opinions of the rulings of this court and the other courts, it is a fact (not a mere allegation, as Cooper claims) that Cooper Tire was adjudicated in each instance to be less than straightforward in the discovery process. Consequently, Cooper’s assurance to the effect of “Trust us, we will produce what we should,” does not exactly ring true.  It sounds good in theory, but ‘[t]here is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts.’”

Cooper Tire opposes any provisions [in confidentiality orders] that would enable plaintiff’s counsel to share information received in discovery in this case with counsel for plaintiffs in other cases filed against Cooper.  Cooper simply does not grasp that the general public has a legitimate interest in knowing the answers to the . . . discovery propounded and other information in this litigation.

This Court agrees with plaintiff that “sharing” provisions within a protective order are a necessary alternative. If there is to be no disclosure to the general public of documents that are obviously not trade secrets, they at least ought to in fairness be made available among counsel acting in part for the public’s interest in similar litigation.  Such sharing also reduces the ability of a party to suppress information without being caught.

Sanction Orders Against Cooper Tire