October 5 (Cleveland depositions)

October 5 (Cleveland depositions) is the Monday set for six Great Benefit employees to be examined at the company’s offices in Cleveland, Ohio. The date matters not simply as a point on the litigation calendar: Judge Tyrone Kipler’s order makes it a test of whether Great Benefit can use its lawyers’ schedules and its employees’ availability to slow a case the court has placed on a fast track.

The date and the dispute

Rudy Baylor noticed depositions for the company’s corporate designee and five other employees, with the examinations due to begin on Monday, October 5. The defense objected that Leo F. Drummond, its lead counsel, was committed to a federal trial and that the six employees could not conveniently be gathered. Drummond said he might not be able to spare three days in Cleveland for two months; he also described the employees as busy and difficult to assemble in one place.

The conflict was consequential because the Black v. Great Benefit case was already proceeding on an expedited schedule. Great Benefit was qualified to do business in Tennessee, and Kipler asserted the court’s jurisdiction over it in the case. The planned examinations were therefore not treated as optional appointments that could be put off until the defense found a more convenient opening.

Kipler’s order

Kipler brought the dispute into open court, where Rudy sat alone at the plaintiff’s table and dozens of lawyers watched. Drummond produced a pretrial order to substantiate his conflict. Kipler accepted that Drummond had other courtroom obligations but rejected the proposed two-month delay, directing that the six depositions begin first thing on October 5 in Cleveland.

The ruling addressed both counsel and witnesses. Kipler required at least two defense lawyers to attend, while pointing out that Great Benefit had other attorneys available to handle the matter. He ordered the six employees to be present and to remain available until Rudy released them. The date thus marked a firm deadline for the company’s witnesses, not merely a target date dependent on their convenience.

Kipler also warned against withholding or mishandling requested files and documents. He said he would remain reachable by phone on Monday and Tuesday and would intervene if Rudy reported that he was not receiving material to which he was entitled. When Drummond had offered to show his trial calendar, Kipler asked to inspect it; Drummond could not easily withdraw the offer. The episode put the defense’s scheduling claims and its discovery obligations on the record together.

Why the depositions mattered

The requested testimony belonged to a larger effort to uncover how Great Benefit had handled the Black family’s claim. Max Leuberg had explained that debit-insurance claims were often initially denied and that policyholders with limited means might abandon them rather than hire counsel. Later, Cooper Jackson described a post-claim process in which claims and underwriting sent files and instructions back and forth, while the insured received further denials and many people gave up. Those accounts made access to employees and company records central to the case rather than a procedural side issue.

At trial, Jackie Lemancyzk testified that Great Benefit’s 1991 policy was to deny every claim initially, with claims exceeding $1,000 denied during a twelve-month experiment. She said the scheme generated roughly $40 million in additional savings and that the Black claim remained denied despite the company’s knowledge of Donny Ray Black’s terminal illness and the policy’s failure to exclude bone marrow transplants. Her testimony, along with the later exposure of Section U material removed from a manual, shows the kind of internal practices the discovery fight was meant to probe. The available account establishes the October 5 order, but does not establish that the depositions themselves took place that day or specify what they produced.

Procedural and narrative significance

The order contrasts Rudy’s inexperience with the practical authority of a judge willing to enforce the timetable. Kipler explicitly recognized that Rudy had only recently obtained his license, yet required Great Benefit to make witnesses and documents available to him on schedule. For the case, the date represents a narrowing of the room for delay; for the narrative, it turns a young lawyer’s notice into a concrete confrontation over unequal access to corporate evidence.