A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Deposition Location

Where?!
Greg Rosenke, Unsplash

One common question in D. Del. cases is whether or not the plaintiff or counterclaim plaintiff must bring its witnesses to Delaware for deposition.

You'd think this would be completely settled by this point, but it still seems to come up from time to time. This post collects some of the relevant authority (Ctrl-D or ⌘-D to bookmark) and talks about a new opinion on this from last week.

Plaintiffs Must Bring Their Witnesses Here for Deposition

Several cases have held that, by default, a plaintiff must bring its "witnesses" here to the District of Delaware for deposition:

The general rule with respect to the location of depositions is that the plaintiff must produce its …

Delaware Memorial Bridge
Chintan Jani, Unsplash

This isn't a surprising result, but it's still a good data point on attempting to force a post-COVID remote deposition.

In Etienne Maugain v. FCA US LLC, C.A. No. 22-116-JLH-SRF (D. Del. Jan. 15, 2025), the plaintiffs asked the defendant to take their deposition remotely, rather than in person, or to take the deposition where they reside (offering to reimburse travel costs). They cited cited medical conditions, dependent care obligations and work schedules. The defendant refused, and the parties ultimately brought cross motions to compel an in-person deposition in Delaware, and for a protective order to prevent such a deposition.

In their motion, the plaintiffs apparently dropped their objections on medical and dependent-care …

An attorney's view after many a deposition—if you're lucky enough to catch a flight back that night.
An attorney's view after many a deposition—if you're lucky enough to catch a flight back that night. Eva Darron, Unsplash

This On Friday, Judge Wolson addressed—and rejected—an effort by an ANDA defendant to limit deposition discovery on the basis that discovery is, in its view, just not that important in an ANDA action. As set they put it:

This is an ANDA case. Black letter law holds that the infringement issues in an ANDA case are controlled by the ANDA itself. . . . Months ago, Defendants produced the ANDA and ANDA product samples from which the relevant infringement analysis must be derived. Plaintiff has now noticed the deposition of both Defendants and seven individuals. But the information that …