Key Discovery Points: Do Your Best to Avoid Discovery Shenanigans!
eDiscovery Case Law Podcast: How Failing to Meet and Confer Effectively Can Lead to Sanctions
Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 305: Spotlight on Civil Procedure (Part 2 – Discovery)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently issued an opinion holding that when a district court has ordered discovery under 28 U.S.C. § 1782, but has not yet conclusively defined the scope of that discovery, the...more
California courts take seriously their rules against gamesmanship in pretrial discovery – as one lawyer recently learned. A stiff sanction, nearly $10,000, was the price he paid for refusing to turn on his laptop’s webcam,...more
On April 29, 2025, United States District Judge John H. Chun of the Western District of Washington issued an order denying defendant Amazon’s request to claw back privileged documents it argued had inadvertently produced in...more
Stull v. Summa Health System, 177 Ohio St.3d 543, --- N.E.3d ---, 2024-Ohio-5718 - In a discovery dispute over the applicability of peer review privilege, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the trial court should conduct an in...more
On March 12, 2025, in the lawsuit Wal Mart Stores East, LP v. Pineda, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal held that Wal Mart (Walmart) did not negligently or intentionally fail to preserve evidence and that an adverse...more
Florida’s Sixth District Court of Appeal (6th DCA), which considers appeals from trial courts in an area running from Orange County down to Collier County, recently confirmed that discovery privileges apply to communications...more
On March 7, 2025, the Federal Circuit issued a decision resolving the ongoing patent litigation between AliveCor and Apple concerning methods of cardiac monitoring purportedly employed in certain of Apple’s Watches. The...more
Jina Garcia found herself entangled in a legal battle with Centura Health Corp. after receiving medical treatment and subsequently facing a lien on any potential settlement or judgment in In Re Garcia v. Centura Health Corp....more
New York courts are trending towards a strict no-tolerance approach in disposing of cases for willful discovery violations. Under CPLR 3126(3), a party may seek to strike its opponent’s pleading for a willful failure to...more
A recent court of appeal opinion out of San Diego demonstrates how the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) has once again been used to impede housing development—this time to the benefit of a high-end luxury spa. ...more
The Fourth Circuit upholds severe sanctions against a party who fails to preserve evidence in litigation. A recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit emphasizes the importance of preserving...more
Construction disputes often involve voluminous amounts of discovery, including documents in the hand of third parties. And if the case is subject to arbitration, it is likely that there will be a dispute about whether the...more
If an arbitration is governed solely by the FAA, an arbitrator may not require non-parties to take part in any pre-hearing discovery outside the presence of the arbitrator. In the recent Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals...more
Pro se plaintiffs Henry and Ijeamaka Ekweani characterized a district court’s confirmation of an arbitration award against them and in favor of American Express Travel Related Services as a “rubber stamp” that violated their...more
Litigation tends to be expensive, increasingly so due to the burdens of discovery. (You can thank the advent of emails, text messages, and other forms of communication now documenting conversations that used to take place by...more
A debt “for fraud or defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity” cannot be discharged in an individual bankruptcy case. 11 U.S.C. §523(a)(4). The precise scope of the term, “fiduciary,” within the meaning of this...more
New York’s highest court recently held that social media users may be required to turn over information from their accounts—regardless of the user’s chosen privacy settings—as part of the discovery process (Forman v. Henkin)....more
By statute, an IPR cannot be instituted if the petitioner, real party in interest, or its “privy” was sued for infringing the patent more than one year before the petition for the IPR. 35 U.S.C. § 315(b). As we previously...more
A multi-year discovery dispute regarding the adverse medical incident reports of a Jacksonville, Florida hospital concluded on October 2, 2017 when the United States Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari in...more
In Allied v. OSMI, the Circuit affirms dismissal of a declaratory judgment action even though Allied’s Mexican distributors had been sued in Mexico on a corresponding Mexican patent. In a first Waymo v. Uber case, the panel...more
District Court Abused Discretion in Ignoring Federal Circuit Mandate to Reconsider Attorneys’ Fees Under Octane Fitness - In Adjustacam, LLC v. Newegg, Inc., Appeal No. 2016-1882, the Federal Circuit held that a district...more
Jobseeker Website May Be Compelled To Disclose Identity Of Anonymous Posters Who Criticized Employer - ZL Technologies, Inc. v. Does 1-7, 13 Cal. App. 5th 603 (2017) - ZL Technologies brought suit, alleging libel per se and...more
California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) allows aggrieved employees to recover civil penalties on behalf of themselves, other employees, and the State of California for Labor Code violations. On July 13, 2017, the...more
In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court ruled today that plaintiffs in lawsuits brought pursuant to the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), can seek the contact information for their fellow...more
The seventh edition of The E-Discovery Digest focuses on recent decisions addressing the scope and application of the attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, spoliation, and discovery responses....more