Adrian Simm Blaw 3201 July 9, 2009 Chapter 3 Case Brief Citation: Computer Task Group, Incorporated v.

Brotby United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, 2004 364 F.3d 1112 Facts: In 1995, William Krag Brotby began working as an information technologies consultant for Computer Task Group, Inc (CTG). Brotby signed a contract with CTG that restricts him from working with any of CTGs clients once Brotby quits or leaves the company. In 1997, Brotby quit his job with CTG and started working for another company, Alyeska, which was a client of CTG. This action by Brotby was clearly a violation of his contract with CTG. CTG then filed a lawsuit against Brotby for violating his contract. The parties then began the discovery process. During discovery, Brotby continually withheld important information, gave misleading answers, filed groundless motions, and even changed his story making it very difficult for CTG to attain the information and facts they were looking for. Brotby ignored court issued motions and paid one of two fines for his lack of corporation with the case. Due to Brotbys lack of corporation, CTG filed a motion to enter a dismissal judgment. The court granted CTGs motion and Brotby later appealed the decision. Issue: Did the judge make a mistake by believing that Brotbys problematic and inconsistent discovery proceedings were intentional and done on purpose in order to drag out the litigation process? Should the motion for sanctions default or dismissal have been granted? Were there any other ways for the court or CTG to get the discovery they needed? Decision: No, to all of these questions. The appeals court found that the lower courts ruling in the case was indeed the right one. The courts concluded that Brotby deliberately prolonged the case by being non-corporative during discovery. Although Brotby claimed that there were other ways to go about getting the information CTG needed, Brotby still disobeyed the courts orders and was non compliant with the motions. Reason: The decision for the dismissal of the case due to the non-compliance with discovery is based on five considerations that the court looks at: the court should be timely with their decision, the courts need to manage its schedule, their cant be any prejudices, the favoring of cases due to its merit, and if there are any possible lesser sanctions the court can order. Brotby broke all five of these considerations. First, he purposely dragged out the case for years, thus making it impossible for the court to make a timely decision. Due to Brotby intentionally prolonging the case, it made it difficult for the court to manage its schedule.

The information that Brotby did produce for the courts was in some way tampered with or falsified, thus creating prejudice toward Brotby. Brotby had no proof that CTG was not prejudice and would deserve deference. Although the court considered lesser sanctions earlier in the case, the court decided that would be unreasonable and denied all of Brotbys requests for lesser sanctions because Brotby did not comply with any of the courts motions and only paid one of two monetary fines. So the case was later dismissed due to Brotbys non-compliance with the courts orders.