Yes, You Can Be Required to Pay Fees and Costs for Losing a Motion to Compel

Originally published by Richard Smith.

A personal injury case led to an award of $4500 in attorney fees against the defendants’ attorneys after they lost a motion to compel. Among other things, the defendants sought to designate certain documents as “ATTORNEYS EYES ONLY” and objected to 14 of 21 document requests on the basis of trade secret privilege — in a car wreck case. The county court at law overruled the vast majority of the defendants’ objections, and awarded the $4500 to the plaintiff. On appeal, the defendants’ attorneys argued that the award was a sanction that could not be justified by any offensive conduct. The Dallas Court of Appeals disagreed, pointing to the trial court’s order stating that the award of fees and costs was granted for securing orders overruling the defendants’ objections to the plaintiff’s discovery requests. That made it an award of expenses on a motion to compel, which is required (but rarely observed) by TRCP 215.1(d). Reviewing the course of the proceedings in the trial court, the Court of Appeals could not conclude that the trial court had abused its discretion in determining that the defendants’ resistance to the discovery had not been “substantially justified.”

MacDonald Devin, PC v. Rice, No. 05-14-00938-CV

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