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AUSTIN v. JOHNSTON COCA-COLA BOTTLING GROUP3/24/1995
LaToya D. Austin filed a petition for discovery against Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group, Inc. Johnston Coca-Cola filed a motion to dismiss, which the district court granted. Austin appeals.
The factual background to this case is undisputed. Austin worked for Able Employment, Inc., (Able) a temporary employment placement service. Able placed Austin at Johnston Coca-Cola in Lenexa, Kansas. While cleaning a bottling machine, Austin was injured.
Austin pursued her workers compensation claim against Able and its insurance carrier, Aetna. During the workers compensation proceedings, Austin served a subpoena duces tecum on William Cahill, director of human resources for Johnston Coca-Cola. The subpoena ordered Cahill to produce all records, statements, and reports regarding her injury, and all manuals, instructions, and diagrams on operating and/or cleaning the machine that caused her injury. The administrative law judge ruled that Austin could not depose Cahill for a possible third-party claim in the
workers compensation case. The propriety of this ruling is not before us.
Austin next wrote a letter to Johnston Coca-Cola asking for certain documents and for permission to conduct an inspection of the bottling machine. That letter apparently did not achieve the desired result, as Austin proceeded to file this action. In addition to her petition for discovery pursuant to K.S.A. 60-234(c), Austin served Johnston Coca-Cola with interrogatories, a request for production of documents, and a request for entry upon defendant's land and inspection of the bottling machine. Austin asserted no substantive claim against Johnston Coca-Cola and takes the position that the Workers Compensation Act precludes any tort claim against Johnston Coca-Cola.
Johnston Coca-Cola filed an answer and a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The district court granted the motion to dismiss, concluding: (1) K.S.A. 60-234(c) does not create a cause of action for discovery against non-parties; (2) Kansas law does not recognize the equitable bill of discovery; and (3) it lacked personal and subject matter jurisdiction.
The district court's determination that Austin's petition failed to state a cognizable claim was a legal conclusion, subject to unlimited review on appeal. Gillespie v. Seymour, 250 Kan. 123, 129, 823 P.2d 782 (1991).
Before addressing the specific arguments raised by Austin, we believe it helpful to examine an early case that considered the equitable bill of discovery. In Pyramid Life Ins. Co. v. Gleason Hospital, 188 Kan. 95, 360 P.2d 858 (1961), the insurance company sought an injunction compelling the hospital to let the insurance company copy the hospital records of policyholders who had been patients in the hospital. The district court denied the requested injunction, and Pyramid appealed. The Kansas Supreme Court concluded that Pyramid was impermissibly trying to discover whether it had a cause of action against the hospital for claims it had long ago paid. "[Pyramid] either seeks to circumvent or fails to recognize that a bill of discovery is not authorized by
the Kansas code of civil procedure or in the practice of the Kansas courts>." 188 Kan. at 100.
The court commented that, even under the federal rules, discovery "does not constitute an unrestricted fishing license." 188 Kan. at 100.
"`The right to require a disclosure is generally limited to instances where there is a real cause of action pending or imminent, and the court is entitled to the information in aid of proper judicial proceedings. The applicant must show a cause
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