Singer v. Superior Court

Petitioner (hereafter referred to as “plaintiff”) seeks by mandate to compel the real party in interest (hereafter referred to as “defendant”) to answer certain interrogatories which it refused to answer, and which respondent court ruled it did not have to answer. It is our conclusion that the writ should issue.

Plaintiff brought an action for personal injuries under the Jones Act (46 TJ.S.C.§ 688) against several parties, of which defendant is one. The complaint alleges, among other things, the fact of plaintiff’s employment as a seaman on the SS Ocean Deborah, the relationship of each of the named defendants to the cause of action, the negligence (or breach of legal duty) of each such defendant in failing to furnish safe working conditions, the injuries received by plaintiff when he fell from the dock, and the causal connection between defendant’s negligence and plaintiff’s injuries.

“21) Please state what fact or facts form the basis for the allegations set forth in defendant’s Answer . . . that ‘plaintiff himself was negligent and careless and did not use due, proper or appropriate care for his own safety. ’

‘ ‘ 22) Please state what fact or facts form the basis for the allegations set forth in defendant’s Answer . . . that ‘said negligence and carelessness and lack of due, proper and appropriate care on the part of plaintiff himself was a direct and proximate and contributing cause of the accident’ herein.

“23) Please state what fact or facts form the basis for the allegations set forth in defendant’s Answer . . . that ‘plaintiff assumed the risk, if any, attendant to his undertakings’ herein.”

Defendant answered all but the three quoted interrogatories, justifying its refusal by the following statement:

“21, 22 & 23. Contain interrogatories appertaining to the pleadings, are too uncertain to require answers, and appertain solely to pleadings on file with the Court. ’ ’

Plaintiff then filed an application under the provisions of subdivision (a) of section 2034, Code of Civil Procedure, seeking an order requiring defendant to answer interrogatories Nos. 21, 22 and 23. The record does not indicate that defendant offered any defense to this motion, other than the matter set forth in its reply to the interrogatories and quoted above. The trial court denied the application, its minute order reading as follows:

“Motion for order to require Parr-Richmond Terminal Co. to give further answers to interrogatories 21, 22 and 23 denied.”

In its return to the alternative writ, defendant, for the first time, in justification of its refusal to answer the three challenged interrogatories, alleged that “as trial preparation it is further alleged that Parr-Richmond has answered general interrogatories providing explicit factual information on every inquiry where facts were available; that in addition thereto Ocean Transportation Co., a co-defendant has provided facts

In its points and authorities filed with the return defendant attempts to justify its refusal to answer the interrogatories on three grounds. It first asserts that “plaintiff himself has better knowledge of his own acts leading up to the incident.” Next, reliance is had on a statement made in 2 DeMeo on California Deposition and Discovery Practice, page 34, to the effect that a party should not be required “to state fully and in detail” what act or acts caused the injury. In the third place, reliance is had on the case of Ryan v. Lehigh Valley B. Co., 5 F.R.D. 399 , which holds that a defendant should not be foreclosed by its answers to interrogatories from subsequently relying upon further evidence regarding the cause of the injury which may be produced at the trial by any party to the action. The case also implies that interrogatories calling for opinions may be improper.

Thus, in its return and points and authorities defendant contends that, on five separate grounds, the three questioned interrogatories seek information that is beyond the limits of the scope of the discovery statute.

1. The three questions pertain only to the pleadings;

2. They are too uncertain to require answers;

3. Plaintiff is in a better position to know the answers than is defendant;

4. To require defendant to state “fully and in detail” all facts upon which it bases its allegations of contributory negligence and assumption of risk would have the effect of unfairly limiting defendant from relying upon any other facts or evidence which might subsequently come to its knowledge, or which might be produced at the trial by other parties ;

5. The interrogatories call for opinion, rather than fact.

It should be noted that, as far as the trial court is concerned, only points 1 and 2 were urged as justification for not answering the questions. Before this court, however, the other three points have been raised, and, in our opinion, should be discussed.

It is true, of course, that the defendant is required to plead the facts upon which he relies to support his defense of contributory negligence, and must allege the causal connection between those facts and the injury. But this simply means that a defendant may allege that the plaintiff was

The claim that these interrogatories are too uncertain to require answer is without merit. In toto, they ask for specific facts; facts upon which defendant, at the present time, relies for its defenses of contributory negligence and assumption of risk. The request is not uncertain in any sense.

Nor can it be said that plaintiff is in a better position than defendant to know the answers to the interrogatories. While it is true that plaintiff may have more knowledge than his adversaries of the facts which allegedly caused the accident, he does not necessarily have knowledge of the facts on which this defendant bases its defenses. The information sought by these particular interrogatories is of a nature peculiarly within the mind of defendant. Moreover, no rule or authority is cited which authorizes refusal to answer an interrogatory simply upon the ground that the answer is known to the party seeking the information. -

This brings us to defendant’s fourth and main contention, which is that it should not be required to limit itself by stating all of the facts upon which it may subsequently rely. It has been suggested that an interrogatory which seeks to “tie a party down in such a way that he may be deprived of his substantive rights” is improper (James, The Revival of Bills of Particulars Under the Federal Rules (1958), 71 Harv.L.Rev.

The interrogatories here involved do not call for “all the facts” defendant intends to produce at the trial in support of the pleaded defenses. If the questions were that broad the trial court might well have been justified in refusing to compel answers. But the interrogatories here involved are not of that character. They carefully limit the questions to facts now known to defendant. They request a statement of “what fact or facts form the basis for the allegation ’ ’ of contributory negligence and assumption of risk. Thus, by their very language, it is obvious that the interrogatories do not request

Moreover, even if defendant felt that forthright answers to the interrogatories might unduly limit it at the time of trial, it could easily have protected itself by stating the facts now known to it and then stating that such answers were without prejudice to producing subsequently discovered facts. Or it could have answered the questions, and then asserted its right to claim additional factual issues at the pretrial conference (subd. (c) of rule 8.2 of the Rules for the Superior Courts; see also rules 8.6 and 8.8). Or it could have filed objections to the questions as permitted by subdivision (a) of section 2030, Code of Civil Procedure, and thus presented the problem to the court for decision. But it chose none of these alternatives, thus forcing the plaintiff to proceed either by a motion to strike the answers under subdivision (d) of section 2034, Code of Civil Procedure, or by moving for an order requiring the defendant to answer under subdivision (a) of the same section. The plaintiff chose this last alternative. The record does not show that defendant filed any reply to this motion, it being content, apparently, to rely upon the assertions made in its reply to the interrogatories, i.e., that the questions “are too uncertain to require answers, and appertain solely to the pleadings.” It was not until it filed its return to this proceeding that defendant sought court approval of its refusal to answer.

For these several reasons, the issue presented to us is a relatively simple one. The three questioned interrogatories merely call for the facts this defendant now knows that support its pleaded defenses. The answers will not constitute an unfair limitation on defendant. They will not prevent it at the trial, from presenting subsequently discovered facts, or even from presenting facts now known to it but overlooked by it, if it can show such oversight was in good faith. The plaintiff is entitled to the information. Requiring the defendant to answer is not oppressive. Thus, the contention under consideration is without merit.

The last contention of defendant is that the questioned interrogatories call for opinions and not for facts. If the interrogatories did call for opinions rather than facts, they might well be subject to criticism. (Ryan v. Lehigh Valley R. Co., supra, 5 F.R.D. 399 .) But they do not. A mere reading