I happened to be looking up some old posts on District 150, and I ran across the post on Kay Royster’s racial-discrimination lawsuit against the school board from July 2006.

I haven’t heard anything about it lately, so I did a little research. The latest filing was on February 14 — a Motion to Compel. It was filed by the defendants (school board) and says:

1. Plaintiff has failed to answer defendants’ interrogatories and requests for production served on December 5, 2006.
2. Defendants’ counsel has undertaken good faith efforts to try to obtain discovery responses and documents from plaintiff’s counsel but such efforts have proved unsuccessful.
3. Plaintiff’s discovery misconduct has unduly delayed and interfered with the scheduling of plaintiff’s deposition and other necessary discovery.

In a supplementary memorandum, the defendants further stated, “Since filing her complaint seven plus months ago, plaintiff [Royster] has only within the past week provided the documents referenced in her tardy initial Rule 26 disclosures, and has ignored any need to respond to defendants’ interrogatories and requests for production. As a result, plaintiff has deprived defendants of what should have been a standard part of the early discovery process.”

“Rule 26 disclosures” are simple things like a list of possible witnesses, any documents that support each party’s case, how much they’re seeking in damages, etc. Yet, Royster was slow in delivering these standard disclosures, and apparently has still not given the defense all the information they’re due.

Doesn’t this seem odd? I’m no lawyer, so maybe one of my lawyer readers can weigh in here, but isn’t it usually defendants who drag their feet in lawsuits? Why would a plaintiff ever want to do this?