before the court on December 5, 1986, he had not filed the final pretrial order materials which the court had scheduled to be due two days earlier;  nor had he met National Seating's request for interrogatories and the names of any expert witnesses that Parker intended to call at trial.


21
Parker now offers several explanations--none of them convincing--to excuse his failure to comply with the court's discovery orders.  He first blames Freightliner for his delay, reasoning that Freightliner's late entry into the lawsuit made it impossible for him to name his experts in a timely fashion because he was uncertain whether he needed to retain experts capable of addressing the defects of National Seating's seat, Freightliner's trucks, or both.  Yet, he fails to acknowledge that itwas his own delay in serving Freightliner that created this problem.  Next he argues that counsel for National Seating refused to cooperate with discovery, but the record reveals that Parker never sought the court's help in curbing these alleged discovery abuses.  Finally, while seemingly admitting his own responsibility for his noncompliance, Parker maintains that the district court failed to recognize that he was actively engaged in relevant discovery in several closely-related cases.  Parker's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, the district court did recognize and consider the "mitigating" circumstance of his counsel's involvement with discovery in several cases involving the same defendants and similar incidents.  In the opinion of the district court, however, his repeated refusal to acknowledge or obey its discovery orders simply outweighed