EAST ST. LOUIS – Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel, who presides over paraquat suits against Syngenta and Chevron, struck a discovery motion of Denver injury lawyer Aimee Wagstaff on Jan. 7.
Rosenstengel found Wagstaff disregarded her directives placing a plaintiff’s executive committee in charge of discovery.
Rosenstengel had appointed Wagstaff to the committee last July, but Wagstaff resigned in 20 days without explanation.
On Dec. 22, Wagstaff moved to compel Syngenta and Chevron to produce three depositions on behalf of Christian County resident Stephen Durbin.
“While plaintiff recognizes this motion from a non leadership law firm may be unorthodox, the confluence of recent events has rendered it necessary,” she wrote.
The depositions happened in the nation’s first paraquat suit, which Steve Tillery of St. Louis filed for Thomas Hoffman in St. Clair County circuit court in 2017.
Tillery reached a tentative settlement with Syngenta and Chevron last year but he hasn’t presented it to associate judge Kevin Hoerner for approval.
Wagstaff’s motion sought depositions of Syngenta representatives Philip Botham and Montague Dixon and Chevron representative Timothy Patterson.
She claimed Syngenta and Chevron withheld them and argued that a confidentiality order from Hoerner’s court precluded production.
“That argument misreads the Hoffman order and wrongly presumes that this court is bound by Hoffman,” she wrote.
“This court owes no deference to state procedural orders.”
She claimed Tillery told Hoerner that the transcripts were his own work product, contained trade secrets, and enjoyed common law copyright protection.
“It is difficult to see how defendants would have standing to raise a work product defense on behalf of Mr. Tillery, who is ostensibly a party opponent,” she wrote.
She claimed the depositions contained admissions.
She claimed depositions of Botham and Dixon were scheduled for the week of Jan. 24, and Chevron hadn’t identified a designee.
“Allowing defendants a do over of their corporate depositions while keeping their prior admissions hidden would also work a manifest injustice,” she wrote.
She wrote that lawyers have proprietary interest in private work product, “but they do not own the facts elicited from a party opponent.”
The executive committee reacted in two steps.
On Dec. 24, they asked Rosenstengel to review the depositions in chambers.
Lead counsel Sarah Doles wrote, “Judge Hoerner’s order does not prohibit production of the Botham, Dixon, and Patterson deposition transcripts.”
On Dec. 28, they filed an emergency motion to strike Wagstaff’s motion.
“The unavoidable truth is that Ms. Wagstaff of Wagstaff law firm was appointed as part of the leadership team, resigned, but is engaging in activities on behalf of her clients that have been delegated to leadership by court order,” Doles wrote.
“Jockeying in this venue to advance cases in another serves no interest apart from diverting the time and attention of leadership.”
Rosenstengel’s strike order quoted her rule that the executive committee would “initiate, coordinate, and conduct all pretrial discovery on behalf of plaintiffs in all actions which are consolidated with the instant multi district litigation.”
She wrote that she authorized the committee to issue discovery requests and motions, “including on behalf of individual attorneys to assist that attorney with the preparation of his or her client’s particular claims.”
As of Jan. 10, she hadn’t ruled on reviewing the depositions.