Last week, Judge Andrews ruled on claims of privilege by Express Mobile ("EM") in Shopify, Inc. v. Express Mobile, Inc., C.A. No. 19-439-RGA, finding that several of the claims were "frivolous," and ordering a revised privilege log and supporting lawyer declarations "so that I know who to blame should Express Mobile continue to baselessly assert claims of privilege."
Entries for tag: Discovery Dispute
In Delaware, there are a few hoops to jump through if you want to bring a discovery dispute before the Court. Local Rule 7.1.1 is the most basic, and requires the parties to make "reasonable efforts" to resolve their disputes, including verbal communications between opposing Delaware Counsel.
Next, each Judge has their particular procedures for bringing the dispute, either requiring a joint phone call to chambers (Judges Connolly, Noreika, and Andrews) or a joint letter outlining the issues and confirming that the parties have met and conferred (Judge Stark). In either case, the parties …
More often than not, when the Court has a hearing on discovery disputes, both sides bring competing issues. No one likes to be totally on defense for an entire hearing, and even bringing a marginal dispute allows you to undermine the opposing party by pointing out their own wrongdoing. And of course, there's always the chance that you'll win.
Judge Burke showed the limits of this calculus earlier this week—it only works if you convince the Court you've got a real dispute. And It's very hard to do that if you admit that you wouldn't have filed your motion if the other side hadn't moved first.
That's what plaintiff did in in …
I thought this was interesting. Last week Judge Burke granted a motion to compel a plaintiff's witness to respond on questions about the plaintiff's litigation financing arrangements.
Apparently plaintiff's attorneys instructed the witness not to answer at the deposition, but in the discovery dispute they only argued that the information is irrelevant, and did not raise privilege. Since relevance is not a valid justification for an instruction not to answer under FRCP 30, the Court permitted defendant to re-ask the question and held that plaintiff's witness must answer.
About Those Redacted Versions
I say plaintiff "apparently" objected only on reasonableness grounds because plaintiff never filed the redacted version of its sealed letter brief—a common problem.
If parties continue …
Yesterday, Judge Burke ordered a plaintiff to collect documents from an additional custodian beyond the limit agreed to by the parties. But he also gave the plaintiff a road map for how they might have won with a little extra effort.
Judge Burke acknowledged that "the parties are not large companies, and that cost and burden were a factor in the parties' agreement to [a] seven-custodian limit in the first place."
But Plaintiff could have provided the Court with a record ... to help the Court conclude that the collection, search, review and production of [the custodian's] documents would be unduly burdensome or costly, or that it would be disproportionate to either the amount in controversy or …
I just came across the above quote, which is from a discovery dispute back in April where Judge Burke struck a very-late-disclosed witness.
It's an interesting—and accurate—description of the Pennypack factors. Most DE patent litigators are familiar with Pennypack, which set forth a loose set of factors for deciding whether to apply the "extreme" sanction of excluding "critical" evidence. Meyers v. Pennypack Woods Home Ownership Ass’n, 559 F.2d 894, 905 (3d Cir. 1977).
Even though Pennypack issued way back in 1977, modified versions of its list of factors are still applied today. When they come up, they most often favor the party producing …
