Myriam Diehl v. H.J. Heinz Company and Metromail Corporation

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The district judge dismissed the complaint, with prejudice, as a sanction for the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the defendants’ discovery requests. Fed.R.Civ.P. 37(b)(2)(C), (d). We must decide whether, in doing so, she abused the broad discretion that federal trial judges possess to punish dilatory litigation tactics.

The plaintiff, Myriam Diehl, a truck driver, filed this diversity tort suit on October 1, 1988, against H.J. Heinz Company and Metromail Corporation. She claims to have been injured when struck on December 16, 1987, by a forklift at a warehouse owned…