Judge Kimbler Journal Entry on Case Captions for Request for Admissions

Judge Kimbler Journal Entry on Requests for AdmissionsThis case is before the Court on Defendants’ Motion for Reconsideration. Defendants seek reconsideration of a prior Court order which granted Plaintiff’s Motion to Deem Admitted Requests for Admissions. For the reasons that follow, the Court finds that Defendants’ Motion for Reconsideration is well taken.

The facts in this case are not in dispute. On or about January 3, 2007 Plaintiff served Defendants with request for discovery by ordinary U.S. mail. The document was captioned “Plaintiff’s Combined discovery to Defendant gratEful truckin, inc., et al.” It included a request for production of documents, Interrogatories and Requests for Admission. Initially Plaintiff sent Defendant the combined discovery requests via the mail. Plaintiff did not send an electronic copy of the discovery requests until February 13, 2007. Defendants responded to the electronic copy on February 26, 2007, more than 28 days after Defendants were served with the paper copy of the discovery request, but only 13 days after Defendants were served with the electronic copy.

Civil Rule 36(C) provides as follows: "If a party includes a request for admission in a document containing any other form of discovery, the party shall include a caption on the document that indicates the document contains a request for admission. A party is not required to respond to requests for admission that are not made in compliance with this division."

According to the staff notes of Rule 36(C), the rule was amended in 2005 to require that if a document contains requests for admission, as well as other forms of discovery, the caption of that document must state that a request for admission is sought. “The amended rule recognizes that, unlike Civ. R. 33 (written interrogatories) and Civ. R. 34 (requests for production), Civ. R. 36 imposes a virtually self-executing sanction, i.e., admission by default, on a party that fails timely to respond. See generally Cleveland Trust Co. v. Willis, 20 Ohio St.3d 66 (1985). The Rules Advisory Committee is aware that parties intermix requests for admission with Civ. R. 33 interrogatories and Civ. R. 34 requests for production. See, e.g., Seecharan v. Macy, Cuyahoga App. No. 75130, October 28, 2999, unreported. (no abuse of discretion to deny motion to deem matters admitted; "the trial court refused to countenance the obscuring of requests for admissions in the midst of other discovery requests"). The Committee believes that although there often are good reasons for combining requests for admission with other discovery requests, the nature of some discovery documents can cause requests for admission to be overlooked and result in inadvertent admissions by default. The amendment is intended to minimize this risk by requiring the propounding party to include, in the caption of the document, a clear notice that the document contains requests for admission. A party is not required to respond to requests for admission that are not made in compliance with division (C).”

In this case, Plaintiff served Defendants with a discovery request which included requests for admission as well as production of documents and interrogatories. Thus pursuant to Civil Rule 36(C), Plaintiff was required to state in the caption of the document that he sought requests for admission.

As noted above, Plaintiff’s request for discovery was titled, “Plaintiff’s Combined discovery to Defendant gratEful truckin, inc., et al.” There is no mention in the caption that a request for admission was contained therein.The Court finds that Plaintiff failed to comply with the mandatory requirement of Civil Rule 36(C). Consequently, Defendants were not required to respond to the requests for admission because Rule 36(C) relieves Defendants of the obligation to respond. The Court therefore concludes that Defendants response to Plaintiff’s request for admission which was sent to Plaintiff on February 26, 2007 was timely. Based on the foregoing, Defendants’ Motion for Reconsideration is granted. The court order filed in this case on February 26, 2007 which deemed admitted Plaintiff’s requests for admission is vacated and set aside.