Zachary Harris v. Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation and Fluor Marine Propulsion, LLC

Summary

The United States District Court for the District of Idaho denied Defendants’ motion for reconsideration of an order imposing lesser sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37. The Court declined to replace adverse-inference jury instructions concerning a non-disclosed witness and an allegedly unpreserved bus etiquette document with a deposition or to remove the document-related sanction. The Court also ordered the parties to meet and confer and submit an updated proposed scheduling order in advance of the November 2026 jury trial.

Holdings

1. A motion to reconsider an interlocutory order under Rule 54(b) will generally be granted only upon a manifest error of law or fact, newly discovered or previously unavailable evidence, manifest injustice, or an intervening change in controlling law; it may not be used to raise arguments or evidence that could reasonably have been presented earlier or to take a second bite at the apple.
2. Defendants were not entitled to reconsideration or to substitute a deposition for the adverse-inference jury instruction because their arguments were previously available, did not identify newly discovered evidence or an intervening change in law, and did not demonstrate clear error or manifest injustice.
3. Defendants were not entitled to reconsideration or removal of the adverse-inference sanction concerning the bus etiquette document because they offered no new evidence establishing that the 2016 PDF remained unchanged through the relevant 2018 period and did not show clear error or manifest injustice.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Defendants satisfied the standard for reconsideration of the prior sanctions order by arguing that a deposition should replace the adverse-inference instruction concerning Susan Rankin.
2. Whether Defendants satisfied the standard for reconsideration by asserting that the 2016 PDF version of the bus etiquette document remained unchanged and therefore constituted a preserved 2018 version.
3. Whether the prior adverse-inference sanctions order should be revised under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b).

Disposition

other