Motion For Summary Judgment Research Articles

Expert Report of Kent D. Syverud in Grutter v. Bollinger

Editor's Note: In Grutter v. Bollinger, __ U.S. ___ ; 123 S. Ct. 2325; 156 L. Ed. 2d 304 (2003), the Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision approving the use of race as one factor in admissions decisions at the University of Michigan Law School. The opinion of the Court discussed an expert opinion of Kent D. Syverud, Dean of the Vanderbilt Law School, concerning the educational benefits of diversity, noting that "when a critical mass of underrepresented minority students is present, racial stereotypes lose their force because non-minority students learn there is no 'minority viewpoint' but rather a variety of viewpoints among minority students." The expert report to which the Court referred was prepared at the Vanderbilt Law School in 1999 and attached as an Exhibit (in Volume 3 of the Appendix) to the Defendant University of Michigan Law School's Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion for Summary Judgment, May 3, 1999, Grutter v. Bollinger, C.A. No. 97-75928, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The report was also referenced in the appendix to the Writ of Certiorari in the Supreme Court of the United States at 215a. What follows is the original expert report as submitted to the Court.

Economic Authority and the Limits of Expertise in Antitrust Cases

Daubert v. Merrell Dow has deeply affected how courts evaluate testimony by putative experts of all kinds in a variety of legal contexts. But the influence of Daubert on the role of expert economic testimony in antitrust cases has been less clear. Several commentators have noted that, although Daubert motions do occur regularly in antitrust cases, courts also continue to scrutinize the legal sufficiency of expert testimony without reference to Daubert in motions for summary judgment or for judgment as a matter of law. In this article, we argue that, whatever the doctrinal rubric or procedural context in which courts examine economic testimony in antitrust cases, their inquiry is ultimately guided by economic authority, authoritative economic knowledge that courts have adopted from the scholarly literature. In interpreting and applying the antitrust laws, courts acquire their most important economic ideas by a pragmatic process that is independent of the strictures that Daubert places on the receipt of economic testimony. Once acquired, economic authority determines the qualifications trial experts must have, the issues on which they can testify, the models on which they can rely, and the methodologies they must use. In the past thirty years, the most important source of economic authority has been the Chicago School's models of the practices that most concern antitrust: cartels, tying, predatory pricing, resale price maintenance, and so forth. The Supreme Court has relied on these models not, for the most part, to adopt rules of per se legality, as some Chicagoans have suggested, but in less sweeping ways, such as limiting or abandoning rules of per se illegality, defining antitrust injury and standing, and determining the sufficiency of evidence. In some notable examples, of course, the Court has declined to follow Chicago models in favor of others. In all of these contexts, however, economic authority frames and defines the role of expert testimony. In the main part of the article, we examine how economic authority has defined the role of expertise in four critical contexts: predatory pricing; market definition and market power; the characterization and proof of price fixing; and the definition and proof of antitrust injury. In the final section we consider the legitimacy of the deference to economic authority over expertise in the formation of antitrust law, and suggest how our account of the role of economic authority affects the continuing confrontation between Chicago and Post-Chicago economics.

Solving the Nuisance-Value Settlement Problem: Mandatory Summary Judgment

The nuisance-value settlement problem arises whenever a litigant can profitably initiate a meritless claim or defense and offer to settle it for less than it would cost the opposing litigant to have a court dismiss the claim or defense on a standard motion for merits review like summary judgment. The opposing litigant confronted with such a nuisance-value claim or defense rationally would agree to settle for any amount up to the cost of litigating to have it dismissed. These settlement payoffs skew litigation outcomes away from socially appropriate levels, undermining the deterrence and compensation objectives of civil liability. Yet current procedural rules are inadequate to foreclose nuisance-value strategies. Class action is commonly thought to exacerbate the nuisance-value settlement problem to the systematic disadvantage of defendants. This concern has contributed to the growing support among courts and commentators for subjecting class actions to precertification merits review (PCMR), generally understood as conditioning class certification on prior screening of class claims for some threshold level of merit. This article proposes mandatory summary judgment (MSJ) as a solution to the problem of nuisance-value settlement in class actions and in civil litigation generally. Essentially, MSJ denies judicial enforceability to any settlement agreement entered into before the nuisance-value claim or defense has been submitted for merits review on a motion for summary judgment or other standard dispositive motion. Assessing the potential costs of the MSJ solution, we conclude that neither the opportunity for evading MSJ strictures nor the possibility of adding expenses to the settlement of non-nuisance-value litigation outweighs the benefits of MSJ. MSJ will be most cost-effective in the class action context, given the already existing general requirements of judicial review and approval of class action settlements, but MSJ should also prove beneficial in preempting nuisance-value strategies outside of class actions in the standard separate action context. With the MSJ solution set out, the article moves finally to offering a more exhaustive analysis of the theoretical soundness and practical efficacy of MSJ in the class action context, where its marginal benefits are arguable the greatest. First, the article challenges the commonly held belief that class action certification exacerbates the nuisance-value settlement problem, attempting to displace the conventional understanding of complex litigation with a new conceptual framework based on the recharacterization of the class action as part of a continuum of litigation processes rather than an isolated litigation mechanism. Second, the article provides a comparative analysis of MSJ and PCMR as solutions to the nuisance-value problems that do exist in the class action context, concluding that MSJ presents the superior and more cost-effective option.

The Notice of Claim Provision in Breach of Contract Actions Against the City of New York

This article addresses a little known provision in the Adminis- trative Code called section 7-201(a) that requires service of a notice of claim prior to commencement of a contract action against the City of New York. Practitioners who have failed to take note of the provision have had their cases dismissed, some in which more than half a million dollars were in dispute. This article also offers some suggestions for practitioners faced with a motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment for failure to follow the provision’s mandate.

Medicare: Ninth Circuit limits rates providers can charge Medigap insurers.

InVencor, Inc. v. National States Insurance Co.,the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a Medigap insurance provider was only obligated to pay the rates that Medicare would have paid for the same care.Clarence Rollins purchased a Medigap insurance policy from National States Insurance Company (NSIC) to supplement his Medicare coverage. When Rollins became ill and required care beyond that which Medicare would cover, he received his medical treatment from Vencor Hospital-Phoenix (Vencor). Upon Rollins's death, NSIC paid Vencor $38,760. Vencor claimed that NSIC owed an additional $132,438 because NSIC was not entitled to the lower care rates established by Medicare. NSIC refused to pay Vencor's higher rates. As a result, Vencor sued NSIC for breach of contract.The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona held, on a motion for summary judgment, that no breach occurred, and that NSIC was obligated to pay only the lower rates established by Mediare. The Ninth Circuit affirmed this decision.

Employment: protecting public health abrogates due process requirement for suspension proceedings.

InPatel v. Midland Memorial Hospital & Medical Center,the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the defendant hospital did not violate the plaintiff's due process rights by suspending his clinical privileges without a pre-suspension hearing, where there were reasonable grounds for assuming that patient safety was at risk. Dr. P.V. Patel, a board-certified cardiologist, brought an action against Midland Memorial Hospital and several of its doctors, alleging that the suspension of his clinical privileges violated his right to a pre-suspension hearing; was the result of racial discrimination; and resulted in anticompetitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted Midland's motion for summary judgment. The parties filed cross appeals, Dr. Patel on the ground that there were genuine issues of fact for all of his claims, and Midland on the ground that, with the exception of the civil rights claim, it was immune from all of Dr. Patel's claims under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA).

Uncertain Justice: Liability of Multinationals under the Alien Tort Claims Act

On August 31, 2000, a federal district court judge in California handed down a decision that disposed of a potentially groundbreaking human rights case.' In Doe v. Unocal Corp.,2 Judge Ronald S.W. Lew granted defendant Unocal's motion for summary judgment,3 thereby dismissing claims brought by fifteen Burmese villagers4 under the Alien Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. ? 1350 (ATCA).5 The plaintiffs sought to hold the defendant, a California-based energy company, liable for human rights violations committed by the Burmese military in furtherance of defendant's pipeline venture. An earlier version of the case, National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma v. Unocal,6

Order Granting Defendants' Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment, Carnegie Mellon University v. Hoffmann-La Roche

Order Granting Defendants' Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment, <i>Carnegie Mellon University v. Hoffmann-La Roche</i>

The perversity of sexual-harassment law: effects of recent court rulings

The outcome of 109 motions for summary judgment filed since June 1998, in which employers argued that a hostile-environment case should be dismissed because the employer satisfied, as a matter of law, the affirmative defense are analyzed. The examination of these cases provides the opportunity to test past conjecture and describe how courts have implemented the Ellerh and Faragher rulings. It is found that employers are still able to prevail in summary-judgment motions. With evidence showing that employers can satisfy the affirmative defense, each of the three areas that commentators have suggested should have prevented such success is examined. What courts required to constitute reasonable care, how courts have ruled when employees failed to report harassment, and how courts have ruled when employees did report harassment.

Litigating Challenges to Executive Pay: An Exercise in Futility?

This paper is an empirical analysis of plaintiffs' success rates in executive compensation litigation. Using data from publicly available files, this study examines a sample of 124 cases where shareholders have challenged executive compensation levels and practices at public and closely held corporations. This data set shows that shareholders are successful in at least some stage of this litigation in a significant percentage of these cases. Our most robust result is that plaintiffs win a greater percentage of the time in compensation cases against closely held companies than against publicly held companies. This result is consistent for every stage of these cases - motions to dismiss, motions for summary judgment, trial and appeal. We also find that, on average, plaintiffs fare better in compensation cases in courtrooms outside of Delaware than in Delaware. However, once we control for the different composition of the Delaware Courts' caseload, these differences disappear and the overall success rates in executive compensation litigation are surprisingly similar. When we look at the procedural and substantive claims being made in the cases, we find some other interesting results. Demand futility is a significant barrier to getting such suits off the ground. Plaintiffs lose on a motion to dismiss for failure to make demand about half the time. In Delaware, motions to dismiss for failure to make demand are much more frequently raised since the Delaware Supreme Court's decisions in Aronson v. Lewis, although plaintiffs today seem to succeed in overcoming them a greater percentage of the time. The picture is more complicated with respect to the substantive claims made in these cases. Plaintiffs average about 30% success in maintaining duty of care claims at the various stages of these suits with slightly higher success rates in non-Delaware cases. However, since the Delaware Supreme Court's decision in Smith v. Van Gorkom, the number of these claims has increased and their likelihood of success at least at some stage of the litigation appears to have increased. With waste claims, plaintiffs succeed about 40% of the time, while for duty of loyalty claims, they win about 35% of the time. Plaintiffs are consistently more successful at close corporations than at public corporations for both types of claims.

A ‘Con Law’ Casualty or Victory?

IN 1992 the school board for Chatham County, Georgia, which includes Savannah, adopted a Safe School Plan. The plan generally called for zero tolerance for drugs, alcohol, and weapons. In 1993 the board followed up with a specific Drug-Free Workplace Policy (DFWP) for its employees. Its purpose is to deter users and abusers of alcohol, drugs and controlled substances. Under this policy, whenever supervisor observations or objective circumstances reasonably [generate] a suspicion that an employee might possess or be using these substances, the employee will be tested for drugs within two hours. An employee's refusal to consent to the test or to a search of his or her personal property located at the school is cause for discipline, at the board's sole discretion, up to and including termination. Finally, the policy requires that [a]ny employee who tests positive . . . [for] alcohol, drugs or controlled substances will be terminated. In 1994 the district selected Sherry Hearn, a Savannah High School teacher of social studies, including U.S. history and constitutional law, as teacher of the year. In April 1996, when Hearn marked her 27th year in the district and was only three years from being eligible to retire with full benefits, the district and the county police conducted a drug lockdown and random search at the high school. Hearn's car was in the school's rear parking lot, unlocked and with its passenger side window down. The county police department's drug-sniffing dog alerted at Hearn's vehicle. The school security employee instructed the police officer to let the dog enter the car through the open passenger window. The dog alerted on the car's closed ashtray. Without obtaining Hearn's consent or a warrant, the school security employee then entered the car, opened the ashtray, and found a partially burned, hand-rolled cigarette. The officers field-tested it for marijuana, and the cigarette tested positive. They then took the cigarette, along with the vehicle's faculty parking permit from the dash, to the school's principal, Linda Herman, and informed her of these events. When Herman summoned Hearn from class, she denied any knowledge of the cigarette or possession of any marijuana. One of the county police officers Mirandized Hearn, telling her that she would probably be charged with criminal possession of marijuana. Herman informed Hearn that, under the DFWP, she must take a test within two hours. Hearn refused, stating that she thought that they might have been violating her constitutional rights and that she wanted to consult with her attorney to determine if this impression was correct. Herman gave Hearn a warning letter that directed her to take the test within the requisite period and stated that to comply may result in disciplinary action. Hearn, however, continued to refuse. The next morning, after a delay in reaching her attorney and obtaining his advice, Hearn took a test on her own, and it was negative.1 Nevertheless, as a result of her failure to comply within the prescribed period, the superintendent suspended her, pending a board termination hearing for insubordination and other good and sufficient cause. After the hearing, at which Hearn was represented by counsel, the board voted to terminate her contract. She appealed to the state board of education, which upheld the local board's termination decision. On 15 April 1997, Hearn filed suit in federal district court, claiming that the search of her car was illegal under both the board's own policy, which requires an employee's consent or a search warrant in order to search an employee's personal property at school, and the U.S. Constitution. On 25 February 1998, the court granted the district's motion for summary judgment, thus deciding against Hearn without a trial. One month later, Hearn filed for review by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. …

Sexual-Harassment Policies for the Workplace

In 1993 the Supreme Court ruled that, to be unlawful, sexual harassment need not be so severe as to cause psychological damage (although it must be more than merely offensive). As a result of the difficulty of defining hostile workplace environments, judges are no longer inclined to grant employers' motions for summary judgment to dismiss charges unless a firm has implemented a proper workplace sexual-harassment policy. An appropriate policy will include these components: (1) Procedures by which managers can get to know the ins and outs of the workplace, including an effective way to determine employees' concerns; (2) management support, including the wide dissemination of the written policy and procedures and an endorsement from top-level executives; (3) training that teaches supervisors to recognize sexual harassment and gives them the authority to address the issue; (4) procedures for a prompt and properly measured response to claims of harassment; (5) multiple avenues for filing a harassment claim within the firm's organization; (6) protection for victims and witnesses from retaliation; (7) preservation of confidentiality; and (8) ongoing monitoring of the firm's sexual-harassment policy.

Kansas Court Denies Employment Discrimination Claims under ADA, FMLA, and PDA

The United States District Court of Kansas, in Gudenkauf v. Stauffer, Znc.(922 F. Supp. 465 (D. Kan. 1996), granted the defendants motion for summary judgment for the plaintiff's claims of pregnancy-related discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), but the court denied a similar motion for the plaintiff's claim under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). The court found summary judgment to be appropriate for the ADA claim based on its finding that the plaintiff's pregnancy did not constitute an impairment as required by the statute; as for the FMLA claim, it determined that the defendants failure to grant the plaintiff's leave request did not violate the statute. However, the court determined that summary judgment was inappropriate for the PDA claim because of material questions of fact about whether the defendant had acted with discriminatory intent.In considering the motions for summary judgment, the court accepted the following facts as incontrovertible. Plaintiff Michaela Gudenkauf worked for the defendant Stauffer, Inc.

At Law: Easing the Passing

One issue that will certainly be at center of public controversy in next few years is whether physicians should be authorized to participate actively in ending their patients' lives. While issue has arisen sporadically before, events in May underscore its central position. first and most widely noted--but ultimately least interesting or significant--was Dr. Jack Kevorkian's acquittal on 2 May of assisting Thomas W. Hyde, Jr., to commit suicide in doctor's battered 1968 Volkswagen bus. Kevorkian, who has helped twenty people die since June 1990, was charged under a statute enacted in 1992 specifically to stop his activities. At trial, for first time, Kevorkian argued prosecution was in error because Hyde's death had occurred while VW van was still in Oakland County and not--as indictment charged--on Belle Isle, a Detroit island park in Wayne County where he disclosed death to police. trial judge instructed jury that unless it found beyond a reasonable doubt that death had occurred in Wayne County, it would have to acquit. In comments after trial, jurors stated they could reach agreement on this point. meaning of not guilty verdict was further clouded because Kevorkian argued that his actions came within exclusion in statute for administration of medications with intent of relieving pain, even if treatment does hasten Rather than stand on what was obvious--that he had provided carbon monoxide, which has no known analgesic value, solely as a means of causing death--Kevorkian claimed that he did it to ease Hyde's pain. An indication of importance of this argument can be seen from one juror's comment, I believe he did this to relieve this man's pain and suffering, even though it was wrong to help someone commit As University of Michigan law professor Yale Kamisar commented, The jury was obviously badly confused.[1] Compassion in Dying In muddying waters, Kevorkian's attorney won his client an acquittal but removed any precedential value from Hyde case. In contrast, an opinion handed down next day by Chief United States District Judge for Western District of Washington faced issue of physician assistance in suicide head on.[2] case was brought by three terminally ill patients, five physicians who treat terminally ill patients, and Compassion in Dying, an organization which provides support, counseling and assistance to mentally competent, terminally ill adults considering plaintiffs challenged Washington State statute that makes it a felony knowingly to aid another person in committing suicide, but only insofar as it bans physician-assisted suicide by mentally competent, terminally ill adults who knowingly and voluntarily choose to hasten their death. On cross motions for summary judgment, Judge Barbara J. Rothstein declared law unconstitutional because it violated two Fourteenth Amendment rights of this group of patients in two ways. First, it placed an undue burden on exercise of a protected liberty, and second, it violated light to equal protection by treating this group differently from patients who are permitted to die by refusing life-sustaining treatments. Judge Rothstein's decision holds great national significance because forty-four states now have statutes or common law making it a crime to aid suicide. But this is to say that it is a good decision. Quite contrary, it represents faulty constitutional analysis, inappropriate lawmaking process, and unwise policy. In concluding that Washington statute violates due process clause, court relies primarily on Supreme Court's decisions involving reproductive liberty. From these it derives two points. Analogizing to 1992 abortion decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Judge Rothstein argues that the decision of a terminally ill person to end his or her life |involv[es] most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime' and constitutes a choice central to personal dignity and autonomy. …

At Law: Facts, Values, and Expert Testimony

In a court of law, we ordinary mortals are usually confined to testifying about matters of which we have direct - things we have personally seen or heard. Not so expert witnesses, who are permitted to offer their opinions. Successful expert witnesses who combine impressive credentials with die ability to charm their listeners may in effect take over a jury's function, since their opinions may extend to the ultimate in a case, such as whether die defendant was negligent. Experts can have unusual influence when novel science is at issue, as is sometimes true in cases of interest to bioethicists - for instance, the genetics of homosexuality, the biological status of frozen human zygotes or embryos, the effects of psychosurgery, or the reliability of genetic fingerprints. When a dispute lies at the heart of the question, What probably happened; an expert's opinion is often crucial in determining whether the case will even go to trial. Such, indeed, was the result in a case filed by two children born with serious birth defects and their parents against the company that marketed Bendectin, a prescription anti-nausea drug that the children's mothers took while pregnant. Having reviewed the thirty relevant published studies involving over 130,000 patients, a physician-epidemiologist who served as an expert for the defendant concluded maternal use of Bendectin during the first trimester has not been shown to be a risk factor for human birth defects.[1] Instead of challenging this expert's characterization of the literature, the plaintiffs in Daubert v. Merrell Dow attempted to refute his conclusion by providing eight other experts' affidavits based on in vitro and animal studies, the similarity in chemical structure of Bendectin to other known teratogens, and a reanalysis of the published epidemiologic studies. In light of the vast extent of those studies, the federal district judge ruled that expert testimony regarding causation would be limited to epidemiologic data, but the statistical recalculations would not be admitted because they had not been published or subjected to peer review. Precluded from introducing their expert testimony, the plaintiffs had no case, and the trial judge granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment. The court of appeals affirmed on the basis that the unpublished reanalyses did not meet the requirement set forth in Frye v. United States that a technique be generally accepted as reliable in the relevant community.[2] On 28 June 1993, the United States Supreme Court reversed the appellate court and sent the case back for further proceedings. Most of justice Blackmun's opinion (parts of which were for a unanimous court, while other parts were for everyone except Chief justice Rehnquist, who dissented, and justice Stevens, who joined him) is of interest only to lawyers, but buried among technical points about the law of lies an important issue of values, to which we will turn in a moment. The Court rejected the Frye test, which for seventy years had set the standard for admission of evidence, not because it found fault with its general acceptance rule (though that rule has had many detractors over the years) but because the Court concluded that Congress, in adopting the Federal Rules of Evidence twenty years ago, chose not to incorporate Frye into them. Rule 402 sets a very liberal standard in favor of admission of all relevant evidence (not excluded by another rule). Because expert testimony can be both powerful and misleading, the Court in Daubert construes the rule on admission of expert evidence, Rule 702, to require that the theories and techniques about which an expert proposes to testify be reliable. The majority derives this from what commentators call the helpfulness criterion, based on Rule 702's provision that expert testimony regarding scientific knowledge is allowed when it will assist the trier of fact. …

Private Antitrust Litigation: New Evidence, New Learning

Is private antitrust litigation out of control, encouraging frivolous suits and deterring companies from pursuing innovative manufacturing, organization, and distributional techniques? Or is it a fair and useful system, particularly during periods when government antitrust enforcement is lax and pro-business? The contributions in this book shed new light on the current debate over treble damage reform.Using a unique collection of data on more than 2,350 antitrust cases filed in five districts between 1973 and 1983 - a research effort instigated by the Georgetown private treble damage project - prominent scholars analyze the key issues involved in reform proposals. Steven Salop and Lawrence White present an analytic framework for studying private antitrust litigation, setting out the policy issues and providing an overview of the data collected by the project. Paul Teplitz discusses the nature of the data and their collection in greater detail.Kenneth Elzinga and William Wood compare the cost of litigation to the size of settlements and awards in an attempt to gauge the degree to which the system compensates victims of antitrust violations as opposed to the system's effectiveness as a deterrent. Jeffrey Perloff and Daniel Rubinfeld focus on the incentives for litigants to settle, and Stephen Calkins notes the reaction of the legal system to treble damages in the light of motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment. Thomas Kauper and Edward Snyder look at those cases that followed on government cases (primarily price fixing), and George Benston takes up multi-party cases, considering the effects of class actions, joint and several liability, and various claim reduction reform proposals on deterrence and the incentives to settle.The book's final section presents three interesting and diverse policy commentaries by George Garvey, Ira Millstein, and Donald Turner.Lawrence J. White is Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University. He has recently been appointed a Board Member of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Private Antitrust Litigation is sixteenth in the series Regulation of Economic Activity, edited by Richard Schmalensee.

Second U.S. circuit court invites motions for summary judgment

Second U.S. circuit court invites motions for summary judgment

Court Reaction to Summary Judgment Motions in Media Libel Cases since 1979

Court Reaction to Summary Judgment Motions in Media Libel Cases since 1979

Court Examination of the Discovery File on a Motion for Summary Judgment

Court Examination of the Discovery File on a Motion for Summary Judgment

Health department legal liability for injuries in vaccination programs.

It is rare in modern times to find a Supreme Court decision in a state which firmly upholds a traditional principle of public health law; this time, the legal immunity of health departments, local and county, from law suit for alleged injuries sustained by a child in receiving free vaccination at a well-child clinic visit. ' Because of this, the court opinion deserves careful examination and reporting in this Journal. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma reviewed the case wherein serious permanent injuries were alleged from a single DPT vaccination received from medical and nursing personnel at the clinic operated at the Tulsa City-County Health Department. The child was a minor in 1966 when the vaccine was administered. Suit was brought in 1973, one year after the plaintiff reached majority. (Health departments should note the delay of seven years, not uncommon for pediatric legal actions, and should be assured that all relevant patient records and vaccine-purchase records are marked and preserved.) Suit was originally brought against several manufacturers and distributors of the vaccine, including Charles Pfizer and Co., Inc., but the City of Tulsa and the County of Tulsa were also joined as defendants under allegations of negligence (malpractice) on the part of its health department personnel. After much delay in pre-trial procedures, especially in the distribution and answering of several sets of interrogatories (questions asked under oath of certain parties and witnesses in the case), the plaintiffs attorneys dismissed the case against the other defendants and concentrated its claim against the city and county for its health department operations. The key issue in the case thus became whether or not there was any longer a governmental immunity from suit in tort (the negligence claim above) in Oklahoma. The trial court granted a motion for summary judgment, declared governmental immunity to exist, and granted a mere $2,000 in damages, the largest amount allowable under the applicable Governmental Tort Liability Act in the state. The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court asking that the governmental immunity be removed as unconstitutional and improper in modern law.