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Mealey's Discovery

  • March 07, 2025

    5th Circuit Affirms Refusal To Impose Statutory ERISA Penalty In Plan Documents Row

    NEW ORLEANS — In an unpublished March 6 per curiam opinion saying in part that the appellant didn’t “establish that the district court abused its discretion in” determinations made following a bench trial, a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed discovery and other rulings for the sponsor and administrator of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act medical benefits plan in a documents dispute.

  • March 05, 2025

    J&J Subsidiary, Experts Move For Bifurcated Discovery In Asbestos Study Suit

    NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary and three experts it accuses of disparagement and false advertising based on an article they published linking mesothelioma to exposure to talc asked a federal judge in Virginia to bifurcate discovery, with the first phase involving fact questions and the second involving damages.

  • March 05, 2025

    11th Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment, Discovery Rulings Against STD Claimant

    ATLANTA — Upholding discovery and summary judgment rulings for a disability insurer in a March 4 unpublished per curiam opinion, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel rejected the claimant’s arguments that the lower court “did not properly apply [the appellate court’s] framework for evaluating” claims asserted under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and should not have denied her request for “discovery outside the administrative record.”

  • March 03, 2025

    Mass. High Court Upholds Procedural Rulings In Rape, Murder Case, Denies New Trial

    BOSTON — Nine years after a jury convicted Philip Chism for the rape and murder of his teacher, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied his quest for a reduced sentence and a new trial, upholding most of a trial court’s discovery and expert witness rulings and finding that any errors that occurred were not prejudicial to Chism.

  • February 28, 2025

    Iowa High Court: Psych Tests May Be Disclosed Only To Licensed Psychologists

    DES MOINES, Iowa — A trial court erred in granting an insurance company’s motion to compel production of a plaintiff’s psychological test materials in a dispute over uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM) benefits, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled, finding that state law unambiguously holds that discovery of such materials may be made only from one licensed psychologist to another.

  • February 28, 2025

    2nd Circuit Affirms Quashing Of New York Discovery Subpoenas For German Suit

    NEW YORK — The plaintiff in a German lawsuit over purported securities violations did not establish her right to subpoena her opponent in that suit for discovery in New York federal court under U.S. Code Title 28 Section 1782, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, finding that the necessary factors of Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. had not been satisfied.

  • February 28, 2025

    3rd Circuit Panel Upholds Dismissal Of Vaccine Refusal Case For Discovery Defiance

    PHILADELPHIA — A panel of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed the dismissal with prejudice — as a sanction for refusing to cooperate with discovery requests and comply with discovery orders — by a Pennsylvania federal court of a former employee’s lawsuit alleging that her employer failed to accommodate her religious objection to being vaccinated for COVID-19 in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

  • February 28, 2025

    2nd Circuit: Section 1782 Discovery Request Broad, Peripheral To Probate Suit

    NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a trial court’s denial of a man’s foreign discovery request under U.S. Code Title 28, Section 1782, finding no abuse of discretion in its holding that the requested materials were only peripherally related to the remaining issue in a Brazilian probate proceeding and an “extremely broad” fishing expedition for an as-yet-unfiled criminal suit over his brother’s alleged hiding of assets.

  • February 27, 2025

    Petitioners In Baltimore Bridge Collapse Suit Ordered To Be Deposed In U.S.

    BALTIMORE — A federal chief magistrate judge in Maryland on Feb. 26 granted claimants’ motion to compel petitioners and their management agents and employees to submit to depositions in a Maryland federal court in an exoneration lawsuit brought by the owner and technical manager of the ship that allided with and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

  • February 27, 2025

    Federal Circuit Won’t Reverse Discovery Order In Memory Chip Patent Fight

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A California federal judge did not err when ordering a defendant-appellant technology company to turn over 73 pages of source code to plaintiff-respondent entities in a patent infringement dispute over flash memory chips, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Feb. 26, denying a petition for a writ of mandamus.

  • February 27, 2025

    Massachusetts Justice Reduces Talc Pleurodesis Award, Otherwise Affirms Verdict

    WOBURN, Mass. — A Massachusetts justice largely affirmed previous rulings admitting expert William Longo and evidence about a third-party’s testing of talc and said that nothing required upsetting the jury’s verdict finding a talc company liable for a man’s mesothelioma after a talc pleurodesis procedure but that unclear instructions and perhaps an intent to punish led to a “greatly disproportionate” $21.5 million award for future pain and suffering and reduced that portion of the verdict to $6 million.

  • February 25, 2025

    Exclusion Of Expert Was Too Harsh Of A Sanction, Tennessee Appeals Court Says

    JACKSON, Tenn. — A Tennessee trial court failed to show that a woman’s violation of a discovery order “was contumacious, intentional, blatant, or otherwise so egregious as to justify the harshest sanction available, i.e., exclusion of [her] expert and dismissal of her lawsuit,” a state appeals court held, reversing the exclusion of the witness and award of summary judgment.

  • February 24, 2025

    Judge Denies Some Motions On Jurisdiction, Orders Asbestos Discovery

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A distribution agreement specifically referencing Rhode Island as a market keeps a supplier in an asbestos-talc suit, and the alleged failure to produce discovery in another case warrants jurisdictional discovery into related companies as well, a justice in the state said, partially granting motions for dismissal.

  • February 21, 2025

    Citing ‘Glacial Pace,’ Plaintiffs In AI Copyright Suit Seek To Compel Discovery

    SAN FRANCISCO — While the company behind the Claude artificial intelligence promises to produce discovery before upcoming deadlines, its “glacial pace” over the last four months necessitates a court order compelling the production by certain deadlines to ensure that it doesn’t benefit from further delay, plaintiffs in a copyright suit tell a federal judge in California in a Feb. 20 letter brief.

  • February 21, 2025

    4th Circuit Finds Pro Se Plaintiff Was Wrongly Denied Post-Stay Discovery

    RICHMOND, Va. — A trial court abused its discretion in denying a plaintiff’s request for discovery as untimely in a negligence suit against the United States, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, holding that even if a second request served after the lifting of a discovery stay was untimely, a pre-stay request was not.

  • February 20, 2025

    9th Circuit: Prison Review Reports Were Privileged, Shouldn’t Have Been Produced

    SAN FRANCISCO — Reversing a trial court’s ruling to produce certain prison review reports in response to discovery requests by a plaintiff prisoner and intervenor publications, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel majority found that the primary purpose of the meetings from which the reports come is to obtain legal counsel, making the reports protected by the attorney-client privilege.

  • February 18, 2025

    Court Won’t Require Judge To Explain Ruling Excluding AI-Obtained Evidence

    CLEVELAND — A trial judge does not need to explain why he suppressed evidence after a suspect successfully argued that it was obtained through a warrant that relied on artificial intelligence facial recognition software that a company itself admits is not reliable, an Ohio appeals court said in denying a motion seeking to direct the judge to issue findings of fact.

  • February 18, 2025

    Magistrate Orders Another Attempt To Resolve Discovery Row In Breach Lawsuit

    FORT WORTH, Texas — A Texas federal magistrate judge ordered parties to “confer and make a good-faith effort to resolve” a discovery dispute that is the subject of a motion to compel in four reinsurers’ consolidated lawsuits against National Transportation Associates Inc. (NTA) over allegations of inflated provisional commissions and breach of various agreements.

  • February 14, 2025

    Magistrate Sustains Some Deposition Objections In Social Media Addiction MDL

    OAKLAND, Calif. — A California federal magistrate judge sustained some objections in a product liability multidistrict ligation over the purported addictive qualities for adolescents of several of the largest social media platforms, finding that certain deposition topics related to the “factual basis” for the plaintiff states’ beliefs “are contention deposition topics” and not appropriate for the MDL.

  • February 13, 2025

    Discovery Facilitator Named In Delaware Suit Over Alleged Asset Dissipation

    WILMINGTON, Del. — A discovery facilitator has been appointed in a Delaware Chancery Court case concerning the “Agera transactions” — a complex asset-swap arrangement that the plaintiffs allege resulted in the “dissipation of at least $250 million.”

  • February 13, 2025

    Judge Upholds Limits On Depositions, Discovery In ChatGPT Copyright Case

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California denied a motion for relief from a pretrial order, turning away arguments that limits on depositions were improper in such a complex copyright infringement case and that OpenAI entities’ income was relevant evidence in the case.

  • February 12, 2025

    Plaintiffs Seek To Compel Discovery From Maker Of Firefighter Gear In AFFF MDL

    CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee (PEC) in the multidistrict litigation for the firefighting agent called aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) has filed a reply brief in South Carolina federal court seeking to compel a defendant to respond to the PEC’s requests for production of documents and interrogatories, arguing that it is “undisputed” that the defendant sold what is referred to as turnout gear (TOG) that contained per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to firefighters across the country.

  • February 12, 2025

    Texas State Agencies Say They Are Immune From Paraquat Discovery, Seek Court Order

    BENTON, Ill. — Texas state agencies have moved an Illinois federal court to take judicial notice of a ruling in a Texas federal court that quashed certain subpoenas that were issued in the multidistrict litigation for liability from injuries connected to the pesticide paraquat, arguing that the MDL court should rule that the agencies are immune from third-party discovery.

  • February 12, 2025

    California Judge Limits Testing In Mesothelioma Case To BAP1 Gene

    OAKLAND, Calif. — An asbestos defendant may perform genetic testing in an asbestos case, but because expert testimony suggests that science has shown that only a BAP1 mutation can independently cause mesothelioma, the testing will be limited to that single issue, a judge in California said in partially granting a motion to compel production of a sample for testing.

  • February 12, 2025

    6th Circuit Affirms Former Exec’s Losses In ‘Top Hat’ Severance Benefits Row

    CINCINNATI — Affirming that the executive severance plan at issue in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit “qualifies as a top-hat plan,” a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel upheld discovery and judgment on the administrative record rulings against the appellant and found no error in the striking of his jury demand.