Lawsuit: Official won’t be deposed

BY ROBERT J. SMITH

Posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson won’t have to answer questions posed by poultry company attorneys, a federal magistrate ruled Monday.

The decision by U. S. Magistrate Judge Sam A. Joyner prevents John Elrod, a Fayetteville attorney representing Simmons Foods of Siloam Springs, from deposing Edmondson in a federal lawsuit filed by the state against eight poultry companies.

Attorneys for Oklahoma asked Joyner to block the deposition because he’s an attorney in the case and a high-ranking government official.

“The state, not the attorney general, is the real party of interest and is the plaintiff in this action,” Joyner wrote in his opinion.

The lawsuit, filed in 2005, accuses the companies, including Tyson Foods of Springdale and seven others with operations in Arkansas, of polluting the Illinois River watershed with poultry litter. The river flows into Lake Tenkiller near Tahlequah, Okla.

Charlie Price, a spokesman for Edmondson, said the attorney general wouldn’t answer questions about the court’s order. Price issued a statement.

“We maintained all along this was improper, and the court agreed,” he said. “This was an argument the companies must have known they could not win, but winning this issue in court was likely not their real goal.

“ This entire ploy was just another tactic to divert attention from the real issue in this case: the future of the Illinois River and Lake Tenkiller.”

Elrod said he’s satisfied with Joyner’s ruling because it cites Rule 30 (b )(6 ) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures. The rule forces Oklahoma to designate other people to testify in depositions on behalf of Oklahoma. Those answers will “bind” Oklahoma, Elrod said.

Edmondson has held publicly that he’s the only person who can speak for the state regarding the federal lawsuit.

“If there are other people they can put up who can bind the state, it’s fine with me,” Elrod said. “Oklahoma has to pick somebody or some people, and that’s helpful.”

Joyner ruled Monday in poultry companies’ favor when he deemed Oklahoma’s answers to questions posed by Tyson Foods “insufficient.”

In a Feb. 15 demonstration in federal court at Tulsa, Robert George, a Fayetteville attorney representing Tyson Foods, showed how difficult it was to find the answers to questions in the information provided by Oklahoma. In one instance, George dug through a box containing thousands of documents in search of the answer to a single question. Some answers required Tyson to search through hundreds of boxes. “The poultry companies have been subject to accusations in this lawsuit for 1 / 2 years, and the state won’t specify what evidence they have to prove their case,” George said. “The court’s order should bring this sort of gamesmanship to an end.” Attorneys for Oklahoma argued that many of Tyson’s questions were “overly burdensome.” Joyner disagreed, requiring Oklahoma to provide more complete, specific answers within 30 days.

“The fact that something is difficult does not excuse a response,” Joyner wrote. “Such a response cannot reference entire boxes of documents unless the entire box of documents is actually responsive.”