Chapter And Verse

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed dismissal of an action as an appropriate litigation sanction. 

Mitra Rangarajan, who claims that she was constructively discharged as a nurse practitioner at the School of Medicine of Johns Hopkins University — whether because of discrimination and retaliation, as she contends, or because of her performance, as Johns Hopkins contends — commenced four separate actions against the University arising out of the same course of events and alleging state torts of defamation and interference with prospective advantage, as well as violations of the False Claims Act, the Maryland False Health Claims Act, Title VII, and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Over the long course of proceedings in these cases, the district court dismissed one action for failure to prosecute and the remaining three actions as the sanction for Rangarajan’s “flagrant and unremitting” violations of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, especially with respect to discovery and summary judgment practice.

On appeal, Rangarajan contends that the district court abused its discretion by failing to give her adequate warning of the sanction and failing to show required restraint by imposing lesser sanctions. After careful review of the lengthy procedural history of the cases, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion. Rangarajan’s
conduct under the procedural rules was inept and abusive to the degree that, as the district court found in its thorough 44-page opinion, it rendered virtually useless five years of proceedings before the district court, and such abuse would likely have continued in any future proceedings. Accordingly, we affirm.

Among the issues

In response to Johns Hopkins’ motion for summary judgment, Rangarajan took a number of steps to expand, embellish, alter, and recast her deposition testimony. First, she submitted a 51-page errata sheet to her deposition, proposing hundreds of edits to her testimony and justifying many of the changes by claiming that the court reporter had intentionally altered both the transcript and the audio and video recording of her deposition.

And

in support of her opposition to the summary judgment motion, Rangarajan filed a 54-page Declaration in which she introduced new allegations, attached 19 exhibits that had never before been produced during discovery, and revised testimony that allegedly contradicted her deposition testimony. While the district court did not find the Declaration to be “diametrically opposed” to Rangarajan’s statements in the deposition, it nonetheless concluded that reliance on the Declaration “would render the taking of [Rangarajan’s] deposition essentially useless.” 

… the newly disclosed exhibits revealed major failures by Rangarajan to produce documents requested of her during discovery. For instance, several exhibits — screenshots of Rangarajan’s emails — revealed her computer’s entire display showing retained copies of emails in two inboxes labeled “Jhmi” and “Jhmi 1,” and one of those inboxes contained 8,612 emails, most of which had never been produced during discovery; Rangarajan had only produced 1,658 documents during discovery. 

Below

By order dated June 16, 2017, the district court granted Johns Hopkins’ motion for sanctions, dismissing Rangarajan’s three pending actions — the first, the second, and the fourth. In its thorough written opinion, which recited Rangarajan’s misconduct chapter and verse, the court concluded that “[n]othing that [Rangarajan] submitted lends any
credence to her claims that the videotape or transcript of her deposition was purposely altered in any way. . . . The Court suspects that [Rangarajan’s] inexorable need to deflect responsibility and to project it on others perhaps sheds more light on [her] difficulties in the GI Division than any of the actual testimony in her deposition.” With respect to the Declaration that Rangarajan had filed, the court concluded that it was an effort “to replace [Rangarajan’s deposition testimony] with [a] more favorable narrative of events.” The court noted that if it were to rely on the Declaration, the Declaration “would render the taking of [Rangarajan’s] deposition essentially useless.” And with respect to Johns Hopkins’ claims that Rangarajan withheld documents during discovery, the court concluded that Rangarajan “failed to fulfill her discovery obligations under Rule 26(e).” Moreover, the court found that Rangarajan “flagrantly and unremittingly violated the rules governing discovery and summary judgment motions practice” and that Rangarajan herself was clearly culpable. “The responsibility for the lack of compliance with the pertinent rules [lay] primarily with her and not with her counsel.” While the court criticized Rangarajan’s counsel for his judgment, the court concluded that Rangarajan herself “has been and continues to be the prime offender.” Finally, the court concluded that Rangarajan’s conduct “rendered much of [the litigation] activity essentially meaningless,” and her conduct “impacted the dozen witnesses who could not care for patients while responding to her claims and has also depleted the resources of [the various agencies that were necessarily involved].”

Here

We are mindful of the strong policy favoring the disposition of cases on the merits and disfavoring dismissals without a merits decision. See Shaffer, 11 F.3d at 462. But when a party “abuses the process at a level that is utterly inconsistent with the orderly administration of justice or undermines the integrity of the process” — as we conclude Rangarajan did here — she forfeits her right to use the process. Id. We hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the actions.