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Howard v. Alegria

The trial court properly imposed discovery sanctions in a negligence and personal injury case arising from a car accident, since the defendants' answers to interrogatories were knowingly false and willfully made in bad faith.

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In this negligence and personal injury case, the defendants, AAA Cooper Transportation, Inc. “ACT”, Ace American Insurance Company “AAIC”, and Robert Lee Howard, Jr. collectively, “the appellants”, appeal from the trial court’s order, which denied their motion to withdraw an admission in judicio and sanctioned them for discovery abuse.1 In its order, the court struck the appellants’ joint answer and counterclaim as a sanction for intentionally destroying material evidence, for committing fraud on the court and the plaintiff, and for intentionally filing false responses to discovery requests. The appellants contend that the court erred in concluding that they willfully committed discovery abuse, fraud, or spoliation of evidence and that it abused its discretion in denying their motion to withdraw and in striking their answer and counterclaim as a sanction for their alleged misconduct. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court’s order.

1. The appellants contend that the trial court erred in finding that they willfully and intentionally provided false discovery responses, abused the discovery process, and committed fraud on the court. They argue that the court ignored evidence that they acted reasonably under the circumstances and that the alleged improprieties were unintentional and the result of inadvertent acts or mistakes.

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