Nick Sapharas v. HHS - other (1996)

Nick Sapharas filed a petition on January 30, 1991, seeking compensation under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The specific vaccine and alleged injury are not described in the available case document.

The case was assigned to Chief Special Master Golkiewicz. Petitioner was represented by attorney E.

Tasso Paris. On February 6, 1995, petitioner filed a motion for extension of time to provide additional medical information.

The motion was granted, with records due by April 13, 1995. Nearly seven months passed without any contact from petitioner or submission of the required records.

On October 30, 1995, the Chief Special Master issued an order placing petitioner on explicit notice that failure to comply by November 30, 1995, would result in dismissal of the claim. The order stated in pertinent part: "recognizing the harsh sanction of dismissal, the court will grant petitioner one last opportunity to respond." Petitioner again failed to respond.

On January 26, 1996, the Chief Special Master interpreted petitioner's silence as "either an inability or unwillingness to prove its case" and dismissed the petition for failure to substantiate and to prosecute. The Clerk of Court entered judgment on February 27, 1996.

Petitioner took no action for the next forty-eight days. On March 14, 1996, attorney Paris filed what he styled a "motion to modify judgment." Notably, petitioner did not challenge the underlying dismissal; he asked only that the court remove the phrase "and to prosecute" from the dismissal order, seeking to characterize the dismissal as based solely on failure to substantiate the claim rather than failure to prosecute.

In support of the motion, attorney Paris stated that he had conducted an exhaustive search for medical records, expended substantial funds to obtain them, and done "everything possible to prosecute this case," but acknowledged that "the medical information submitted to the Court has been deemed insufficient to substantiate Mr. Sapharas' claim." Judge Tidwell denied the motion.

The court first noted that the motion was procedurally defective: if treated as a motion for review under Vaccine Rule 23, it was untimely by eighteen days (filed 48 days after the dismissal order, against a 30-day limit); if treated as a motion to alter or amend judgment under RCFC 59(d), it was untimely by many days (RCFC 59(d) requires filing within 10 days of entry of judgment). The court nonetheless addressed the merits.

Applying the highly deferential arbitrary-and-capricious standard to the Chief Special Master's dismissal, the court held that there was no abuse of discretion. Petitioner's failure to respond to the April 1995 deadline, to comply with the November 1995 warning order, and to contact the court for nearly seven months constituted a straightforward failure to prosecute, regardless of the records ultimately compiled.

Attorney Paris's citation to his own efforts in locating records was not a response to the court orders requiring their submission. The court found no authority or reasoning sufficient to justify modification of the judgment and denied the motion.