Document VjN6rRngzmxBZx1xNOgvZKVB4

1 STATE OF WISCONSIN' 2 CIRCUIT COURT BRANCH IV MILWAUKEE COUNTY 3 STROH DIE CASTING COMPANY, 4 Plaintiff, 5 6 vs* MONSANTO COMPANY, 7 Defendant. 8 Case No, 639-887 9 10 November 28, 1988 11 12 HONORABLE LEAH M. LAMPONE Circuit Court Judge presiding (Re: Transcript of Court * s Ruling on the Motion) 13 14 15 A r' 7' 7. A R ( A C r S : 16 JOHN PFNDERGAS7, Esq. 17 Appeared on behalf of the Plaintiff 18 ANDREW RUNNING, Esq. JOSEPH McDEVITT, Esc. 19 JAMES FREDERICKS, Esq. Appeared on behalf of the Defendant 20 21 22 23 24 Renata Berschdorf Court R o acr t er 25 HARTOLDMON0029433 THE COURT: In terms of the issue on the data base and the index as to whether or not it falls within the work product with respect to the Wisconsin law cited, I agree with the defense that there is no definitive rule in Wisconsin as to whether this is or is not work product. And in terms of whether the work is done for a specific litigation, the issue of whether that is narrowly or broadly defined, I think that, when we come to an age of where we are now, in a product liability where litigation means not only one particular instance but it's one particu lar product where it generates hundreds of lawsuits, that the work done for those lawsuits can be deemed work product. Here we have a situation where apparently the lawyers involv ed have spent literally thousands of hours organizing the documents in a coherent fashion, summarizing them and putting them in an order of relating to one another so that they could have the advantage of having ready responses to allega tions made at their fingertips, and it's a matter of thou sands of hours they invested in order to prepare for their defense, and it seems to me that that is the classic type of j work product, preparing to organize the materials for use in | I i the litigation, to put them in a fashion where arguments can ! i be presented and supported in a prompt fashion. In terms of whether-- so, I'm satisfied that all of the work that was done in order to organize all of these documents and to - 2- HARTOLDMONOQ29434 1 summarize these documents for the benefit of those lawyers 2 in defending these cases does constitute work product. 3 With respect to whether there has been good cause 4 shown for turning over the work .despite its work-product 5 status, first of all, I am not satisfied that there has been 6 a sufficient showing that the documents which are relied upon 7 by Stroh were so clearly responsive to Stroh's requests as 8 to support any finding of bad faith or inefficiency or neg 9 ligence on the part of Monsanto. The mere fact that Monsantoj 10 narrowly construes rather than broadly construes all of the 11 products' requests does not change it. They are not doing 12 something illegal or inappropriate by taking a narrow con 13 struction to discovery requests, and it's their right to do 14 that and to require a hearing if more is needed. But 1 15 haven't found their responses to be so inadequate, and 1 have 16 not found sufficient evidence of bad faith or hiding of docu-i i 17 ! ments ,particularly where the documentsrelied upon and j 18 jclaimed to be hidden in this case are a matter of public re- 19 cord, . i | 20 ; Now, the merefact thatspecific files were re- ; 21 quested in the medical department and those files were files ! 22 mantled by Stroh and no longer exist, I am satisfied that ! 23 ' there has been no adequate showing that these files were !i 24 dismantled and reorganized because of the litigation. I am 25 satisfied with the representations that they were dismantled 3- - HARTOLDMON0029435 1 long before the litigation, and I do not find the connection 2 here to be such as to require the loss of work-product 3 privilege. 4 And I am satisfied, further, that other things 5 could be done to obtain whatever is out there, one of which 6 is, as 1 suggested, by simply asking for everything that has 7 ever been asked for and ever been produced before in other 8 litigations. 9 And so, for all of those reasons, I'm satisfied 10 that the indexes are work product in this case, and I'm 11 satisfied further that the plaintiff has failed to meet its 12 burden of showing good cause for bypassing the privilege in 13 this case, and so the Motion To Compel is denied. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 HARTOLDMONOQ29436 1 STATE OF WISCONSIN ) ) ss 2 MILWAUKEE COUNTY ) 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I, Renata Berschdorf, an official court reporter 10 in and for Milwaukee County, Branch #4, do hereby certify 11 12 that the foregoing is a true and correct transcript of my stenographic notes taken in this matter. 13 14 Dated at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this 22nd day of 15 December, 1988. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5 HARTOLDMON0029437