Mealey's Discovery

  • September 15, 2026

    Judge Says OpenAI, Anthropic Evidence Doesn’t Go To Meta’s Fair Use Defense

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal magistrate judge declined to order nonparties Anthropic PBC and OpenAI OpCo LLC to produce information related to market substitution, licensing and torrenting practices, finding that differences in the artificial intelligence models and relevance issues defeat discovery efforts in a trio of copyright cases against Meta Platforms Inc.

  • September 15, 2026

    Discovery-Arbitration Dispute Not Worthy Of Review, German Entity Tells High Court

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A German entity on Sept. 14 filed an opposition brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by three litigation funders who are seeking review of a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel’s ruling that it lacked jurisdiction over their attempt to arbitrate a discovery application, which the German entity said is correct and not worthy of review because it created no conflict.

  • September 15, 2026

    Government Will Take ‘Tower Dump’ Warrant Application Fight To 5th Circuit

    JACKSON, Miss. — The U.S. government has filed a notice of appeal over orders from a Mississippi federal court that declined to enter warrants that the lower court said “would permit law enforcement to use ‘tower dumps’ to access the time-and-location-data of all devices that connected to cell towers around the area where” violent crimes allegedly occurred.

  • September 15, 2026

    Nevada Supreme Court Lets Stand Disclosure Order Concerning Raw Test Data

    LAS VEGAS — Exercising its “discretionary power to issue advisory mandamus,” the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that a regulation promulgated by the Nevada Board of Psychological Examiners “cannot direct” the trial court’s discovery decisions and that the trial court “did not manifestly abuse its discretion in ordering petitioners to disclose raw psychological test data to counsel.”

  • September 14, 2026

    Discovery Provision Of Anti-SLAPP Statute Figures In 5th Circuit Ruling

    NEW ORLEANS — Affirming denial of a university’s motion to strike a former student’s complaint, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 11 held that Louisiana’s anti-SLAPP statute “does not apply in federal court” because it conflicts with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12 and 56, which “are valid under the Rules Enabling Act”; writing separately dubitante, one panel member briefly said there was a lack of clarity regarding how the appellate court had “interlocutory appellate jurisdiction.”

  • September 11, 2026

    Reinsurance Payments Defeat Uber’s RICO Standing, Law Firm Contends

    PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia law firm accused by Uber Technologies Inc. and Federal Express Corp. (FedEx) of participating in a scheme to litigate fraudulent personal injury claims seeks partial summary judgment in a Pennsylvania federal court on Uber’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claims, arguing that the ride-sharing company lacks standing under the because the underlying litigation costs were paid by an insurer and any claimed loss arising through a separate reinsurance arrangement is too attenuated to satisfy RICO’s injury and proximate causation requirements.

  • September 11, 2026

    Amici Tell 4th Circuit Geofence Warrant Lacked Particularity, Probable Cause

    RICHMOND, Va. — A geofence warrant case in which the U.S. Supreme Court remanded questions concerning particularity, probable cause and the good faith exception to the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule continues to draw a lot of attention, with amici curiae filing six briefs supporting appellant Okello Chatrie in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals; one of the briefs comes from law professors who warn that allowing “broad geofence queries . . . will help clear the way for prosecutors to explore the dragnet possibilities of conducting reverse searches of chatbot data, as they have with keyword search data.”

  • September 11, 2026

    Bid To Apply Delaware’s Peer Review Privilege In Federal Case Is Rejected

    WILMINGTON, Del. — Declining a request “to apply Delaware's statutory peer review privilege under federal common law,” a Delaware federal magistrate judge issued a memorandum order compelling a medical provider to produce documents including continuous quality improvement reports in a putative class action over alleged failure to provide adequate medical care at Delaware correctional facilities.

  • September 10, 2026

    Ruling Affirming Section 1782 Subpoenas Is Focus Of Certiorari Petition

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a certiorari petition that has been distributed for the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sept. 28 conference, the petitioners argue that allowing “pre-suit discovery” wrongly transforms the statute governing discovery in aid of foreign proceedings into “a weapon for would be private foreign plaintiffs against U.S. residents”; the respondent counters that the statute “permits discovery for use in a reasonably contemplated foreign proceeding, regardless of whether some potential pre-cursor ‘administrative or quasi-judicial proceeding [is] already underway.’”

  • September 09, 2026

    Parties Indicate Forthcoming Resolution In Insurer’s Suit Against Ex-Underwriter

    MIAMI — An insurer and the insurer’s former underwriter stated in a joint status report filed in a Florida federal court that they are holding the remainder of discovery in abeyance as they negotiate a potential resolution to their suit arising from the ex-underwriter’s conduct that the insurer alleges included greatly exceeding his authority by executing a facultative retrocession agreement to cover a risk of more than $44 million.

  • September 08, 2026

    11th Circuit Upholds Decision To Override Bank Examination Privilege

    ATLANTA — Affirming all challenged rulings against two former directors of a bank, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued an unpublished opinion saying in part that it saw “no abuse of discretion in” the trial court’s finding that there was good cause to override an assertion of a so-called “bank examination privilege.”

  • September 08, 2026

    Utah High Court: Contingency Fee Had To Be Disclosed, Can’t Be Awarded

    SALT LAKE CITY — Deciding that failure to disclose a contingency fee for legal services in accordance with a Utah discovery rule means that the fee cannot be awarded as consequential damages, the Utah Supreme Court reversed part of a trial court’s attorney fee ruling in a suit that sprang from a real estate project.

  • September 04, 2026

    Company’s Motion To Compel Discovery Of Documents Denied In Fire Coverage Row

    DENVER — A Colorado federal magistrate judge denied a company’s motion to compel discovery of communications an insurer has withheld under the Colorado Fraudulent Claims and Arson Information Reporting Act (AIA) in the company’s suit against its businessowners insurer for breach of contract and statutory bad faith for its purported failure to cover a claim for fire damage to her retail store, finding that the insurer has met its burden to protect the documents at issue from production.

  • September 02, 2026

    Government Won’t Get More Time To Respond To Expert Who Used AI

    LAS VEGAS — The United States knew that an expert used artificial intelligence to sharpen the grammar and sentence structure in his report for more than two months before attempting to extend a deadline to respond, a federal magistrate judge said Sept. 1 in declining to reopen discovery.

  • September 02, 2026

    Homeowner Insurer, Reinsurance Broker Seek Entry Of Protective Order

    DALLAS — A homeowner insurer and a reinsurance broker filed a joint motion for a protective order in a Texas federal court, seeking the ability to mark as confidential certain forthcoming discovery materials that they consider instrumental to their business practices or containing information not known to the public, in litigation over the remaining breach of contract claim in the insurer’s suit over losses tied to the Vesttoo Ltd. collapse.

  • September 01, 2026

    Class Certification, Sanction Motions Denied In 14-Year-Long Case Against Google

    WILMINGTON, Del. — A Delaware federal judge refused to grant class certification and denied competing spoliation motions filed by Google LLC and individuals who sued the company for purported privacy violations in a long-running class action, ruling that the individuals did not establish a basis for identifying affected web users, certifying a damages class or obtaining prospective relief.

  • September 01, 2026

    Duty To Preserve Evidence Began When Insurer Denied Claim, Magistrate Judge Says

    TRENTON, N.J. — A New Jersey federal magistrate judge on Aug. 31 granted an insured’s motion to determine the triggering date of a pollution liability insurer’s duty to preserve evidence after concluding that the duty to preserve evidence related to the insured’s claim for environmental contamination remediation costs began on the date on which the insurer denied coverage for the claim.

  • August 28, 2026

    Parties Wrap Briefing On Discovery Stay In Asbestos RICO Case

    EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — Parties to a federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit in Illinois involving asbestos attorneys and a pipe manufacturer debated the scope of an order denying a motion to stay discovery and whether a pending motion to dismiss warrants granting a renewed motion seeking a stay.

  • August 28, 2026

    Magistrate Refuses To Stay Discovery Deadlines Pending Mediation Of Coverage Suit

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal magistrate judge in Ohio on Aug. 27 denied an insurer and its insureds’ joint motion to stay discovery deadlines pending their mediation of the insurer’s declaratory judgment lawsuit disputing employment practices liability coverage for an underlying civil lawsuit and a charge of employment discrimination arising from the sexual harassment of its insureds’ minor employee, holding that the parties’ mediation efforts do not preclude them from concurrently proceeding with discovery.

  • August 27, 2026

    Delaware Supreme Court Won’t Reconsider Asbestos Trust Document Ruling

    WILMINGTON, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court denied reargument, leaving in place a ruling holding that discovery rules didn’t permit third parties in asbestos litigation to intervene to block asbestos bankruptcy trusts’ document retention policies allowing the trusts to destroy older claims data that the third parties warned constituted an “unprecedented spoliation of evidence.”

  • August 25, 2026

    New Jersey Adjudicator: Asbestos Depositions Should Be Produced

    TRENTON, N.J. — A special adjudicator recommended that a New Jersey court grant a motion to compel a company to produce depositions related to asbestos litigation, finding that the case involves asbestos and talc and cannot be limited to just evidence involving talc.

  • August 24, 2026

    Ukraine Tells D.C. Circuit Russian Company Wants Discovery To Seek ‘Targets’

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ukraine on Aug. 21 filed an amended appellee brief telling the District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that a Russian oil company’s appeal of a federal judge’s stay since 2022 of postjudgment discovery to enforce an arbitration award in its favor worth more than $172.9 million is not a proper attempt to attach assets but is instead intended to obtain information that will assist Russia’s military as it “selects targets” in the ongoing war between the two countries.

  • August 19, 2026

    Sanctions, Discovery Requests Denied In Dispute Over ‘Defective’ COVID Tests

    NEWARK, N.J. — A New Jersey federal judge denied both parties’ requests for sanctions and affirmed a magistrate judge’s order denying the parties’ discovery requests in a breach of contract suit against a COVID-19 test manufacturer and supplier over alleged defective tests, finding that the magistrate judge correctly denied reopening discovery and that sanctions were not merited.

  • August 18, 2026

    Split Alabama High Court Orders Sharing Provision Changes In Bad Faith Case

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Partly granting a petition for a writ of mandamus in a bad faith case against a homeowners insurer, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that including a sharing provision in a protective order does not inherently violate the state’s discovery rules, but here the order “must be modified to ensure that the information is not shared in a manner that harms” the insurer; four justices wrote separately to concur in the result or partly or fully dissent, and a fifth justice joined in the full dissent.

  • August 18, 2026

    Judge Grants Asbestos Pipe Company Third-Party Discovery From Trusts

    EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — A federal judge in Illinois granted expedited third-party discovery from asbestos trusts in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case in the wake of a Delaware Supreme Court ruling allowing the trusts to implement new document retention policies.