Gillispie v. Correct Care Solutions LLC et al

Filing 62

ORDER signed by Judge Pamela Pepper on 9/20/2018. 54 Plaintiff's fourth motion for extension of time GRANTED; plaintiff to respond to defendants' discovery demands by 10/26/2018; plaintiff may not make any further discovery requests; no m ore extensions will be granted. 60 Defendants' motion to amend/correct scheduling order GRANTED; dispositive motions deadline now 12/7/2018; deadline for opposing summary judgment now 1/9/2019. (cc: all counsel, via mail to Kevin Gillespie at Green Bay Correctional Institution)(cb)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
______________________________________________________________________________
KEVIN EUGENE GILLISPIE,
Plaintiff,
v.

Case No. 16-cv-1592-pp

CORRECT CARE SOLUTIONS, et al.,
Defendants.
______________________________________________________________________________
ORDER GRANTING THE PLAINTIFF’S FOURTH MOTION FOR EXTENSION
OF TIME TO RESPOND TO DISCOVERY REQUESTS (DKT. NO. 54) AND
GRANTING THE DEFENDANTS’ JOINT MOTION TO AMEND/CORRECT THE
SCHEDULING ORDER (DKT. NO. 60)
______________________________________________________________________________
On August 16, 2018, the plaintiff filed his fourth motion for extension of
time to respond to discovery requests. Dkt. No. 54. He explains that he
“consulted with a law firm willing to represent [him],” and that he needs a
sixty-day extension of time for counsel to appear. Id. The defendants oppose
the motion. Dkt. Nos. 55, 58-59. They remind the court that the plaintiff filed
this case in November 2016—almost two years ago now—and that they served
the plaintiff with their discovery requests on February 6, 2018 and April 10,
2018. Dkt. No. 55. Since then, the defendants explain, the court has given the
plaintiff three extensions of time to respond to discovery, yet the plaintiff has
not produced anything.1 Dkt. No. 55 at 2-4. The defendants state that their

Defendants Correct Care Solutions and Dr. Adeyemi Fatoki also initially
stated that the plaintiff did not provide them with blank authorization forms to
review his medical records. See Dkt. No. 55 at 1. On August 28, 2018, CCS and
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discovery requests are “fact-based,” meaning that the plaintiff only needs to
describe what happened to him, and that the responses do not require legal
research or the assistance of a lawyer. Id. at 6. The defendants also point out
that although the plaintiff says that he has a law firm willing to represent him,
he has not provided the name of that firm (or any lawyer), and that since the
plaintiff filed his request a month ago, no law firm or lawyer has filed a notice
of appearance on his behalf. Id. at 4.
On September 17, 2018, the defendants filed a joint motion to amend the
scheduling order. Dkt. No. 60. They ask the court to extend the summary
judgment deadline from September 25, 2018 to November 30, 2018, given the
pending motion for extension of time regarding discovery responses. Id.
The court issued the scheduling order in this case on November 2,
2017—almost eleven months ago. Dkt. No. 27. It set a deadline of March 2,
2018 for the parties to complete discovery; that means that the court gave the
parties four months to exchange their information. On the day that discovery
was set to close—March 2, 2018—the court received the plaintiff’s first request
to extend the deadline; he said only that there had been delays getting
documents copied and returned, that there was a limited law library for
conducting research, and that the prison had been on lockdown for two weeks
due to flu. Dkt. No. 34. The court granted the plaintiff’s request for an
extension, even though responding to discovery demands does not require a

Fatoki filed a letter indicating that they had received signed authorizations
from the plaintiff. See Dkt. No. 58.
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person to do any legal research in the library. The court extended the discovery
deadline to May 25, 2018.
On May 21, 2018, the court received the plaintiff’s second motion to
extend the deadline. Dkt. No. 47. This time, he said that the defendants’
interrogatories required “a lengthy response,” that he hadn’t gotten documents
from an open records request he’d sent to the Brown County Sheriff’s
Department, and that he needed those documents to respond. Id. It is not clear
why the plaintiff would need documents from somewhere else to respond to
interrogatories; if a person does not know the answer to an interrogatory, that
person needs only to say so. If the answer to the interrogatory depends on
information that someone else has, the plaintiff can explain that. Nonetheless,
the court granted the extension, and the court set the new deadline to complete
discovery at July 25, 2018.
On June 29, 2018, the court received the plaintiff’s third request for an
extension. Dkt. No. 52. This request said that the institution where he was in
custody had been on lockdown, so he hadn’t been able to get to the law library
to obtain documents that he needed to complete his research. Id. The court
should have told the plaintiff this at that point, but parties do not need to
conduct legal research to respond to discovery demands. Discovery is the
process of collecting facts about the case. Each side gets to ask the other side
things like: What happened? Who saw what happened? Who might have
records about what happened? When did it happen? Who was present when it
happened? The answers to those kinds of questions are not in law books, or in
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a law library. They should be in the plaintiff’s head. Again, if the plaintiff does
not know the answer to an interrogatory, he can say that. If he does not have a
document that the defendants have asked him to produce, he can say that. If
he does not “admit” a request for admission, he can respond by denying it.
There is no need to go to the library. There is no need to refer to decisions of
other courts, or to refer to statutes, or to look up anything.
The court understands that it is hard for an incarcerated inmate to
represent himself. Things that are easy for lawyers—like walking down the hall
to the copy machine to make copies, or putting a stamped envelope in the
mail—are not so easy for people in custody. But people who are in custody
manage to do it every day. More than a third of this court’s civil cases are filed
by incarcerated inmates. Many of them manage to respond to discovery
requests without asking for any extensions; many more get by with perhaps
one extension of time. The plaintiff now has had ten and a half months to
respond to discovery on a single, straightforward claim that the defendants
were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical need regarding injuries and
illnesses he suffered because of taking expired insulin. That is far more than
enough time for him to answer questions of fact about what happened, and
who was involved in what happened.
The court will grant this request, but this is the last extension the court
will give the plaintiff. If the plaintiff does not respond to the defendants’
discovery demands by the deadline the court sets in this order, the defendants
may file the appropriate motion with the court. The court will not give the
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plaintiff any further extensions of time. In addition, this is an extension of
the deadline for the plaintiff to respond to the defendants’ requests; the court is
not extending the deadline for the plaintiff to make discovery requests. The
plaintiff cannot request any further discovery from the defendants.
The court GRANTS the plaintiff’s motion for an extension of time to
respond to discovery requests. Dkt. No. 54. The court ORDERS that the
plaintiff shall serve his responses to the defendants’ discovery demands in time
for the defendants to receive them by the end of the day on Friday, October
26, 2018. If the defendants do not receive the plaintiff’s responses by the end
of the day on Friday, October 26, 2018, they are free to file the appropriate
motion.
The court GRANTS the defendants’ joint motion to amend/correct the
scheduling order. Dkt. No. 60. The court ORDERS that the deadline for filing
dispositive motions is extended to December 7, 2018. The deadline for
opposing motions for summary judgment is January 9, 2019.
Dated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this 20th day of September, 2018.
BY THE COURT:
________________________________________
HON. PAMELA PEPPER
United States District Judge

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