Nicholas

Opinion by Judge NOONAN; Concurrence by Judge TASHIMA

Tammy Nicholas and the other named plaintiffs (collectively the plaintiffs) appeal the judgment of the district court for the Western District of Washington granting summary judgment to King County and the other named defendants (collectively the defendants). The plaintiffs alleged violation by the defendants of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1988 and specifically of their right to privacy under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment, as weh as a variety of torts under Washington law. The wrongs alleged arose from a prison officer, Michael Graber, one of the defendants, releasing the names of the plaintiffs, personnel who had been involved in restraining Robert Guy, a prisoner suffering from an overdose of cocaine. Gra-ber had given this information to an angry group of Guy’s family and friends at a time they knew that Guy was near death. The plaintiffs’ contention is that the release of the information was done with deliberate indifference to the danger to them and *1085 that this indifference continued in the refusal of the defendants to afford them protection from the danger. Holding that the plaintiffs failed to produce…

concurring:

I concur in all of Judge Noonan’s opinion, including the result reached in the part discussing Denial of Continuance. Maj. op. at 1088-89. I write separately only to elaborate on why I reach that result.

At oral argument, appellants’ counsel candidly indicated that, given the early stage of the litigation, his Rule 56(f) showing was not as complete as it could have been. In today’s modern case management era and the complex rules that implement it, it is easy for counsel to be lulled into a false sense of security that, at least until the court sets a discovery cutoff date, by a Fed.R.Civ.P. 16(b) scheduling order or otherwise, plenty of time remains for discovery and pretrial motions. As this case shows, however, such case management and scheduling is within the control of the trial judge and will not be disturbed, absent an abuse of discretion.

Counsel might normally expect that Rule 56(f) requests would be liberally granted when made even before a discovery cutoff date has been established. At the end of the day, however, the exercise of the district court’s discretion must be measured by whether any claimed error “affectfed] the substantial rights of the…