Sempier v. Johnson & Higgins

In an age-discrimination suit, Sempier (plaintiff) served multiple sets of interrogatories on his employer Johnson & Higgins (J&H) (defendant), who largely failed to respond; after a series of magistrate rulings excusing some responses and ordering new interrogatories, the magistrate ultimately denied Sempier's motion to compel and instead drafted its own bill of particulars for J&H to answer, which the district court affirmed. After J&H's responses to that court-drafted bill proved unsatisfactory to Sempier, and after J&H won summary judgment on the underlying discrimination claim, Sempier appealed both the summary judgment and the substitution of his own discovery demands with the court's bill of particulars.