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Mealey's Discovery

  • November 05, 2025

    Expert Opposes Sanction For Asbestos-Talc Study Email Destruction

    NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — There was no way to know that defendants would want an expert’s emails about a study, more than three years before the filing of a trade libel case, and even if the originals were deleted, Pecos River Talc LLC never investigated whether it could obtain the evidence through other means, an asbestos-talc expert tells a federal judge in Virginia in opposing sanctions for evidence spoliation.

  • November 05, 2025

    Kentucky High Court: Ruling Cut Off Plaintiff’s Jurisdictional Discovery Rights

    FRANKFORT, Ky. — Issuing a partial reversal and remand, the Kentucky Supreme Court said there was enough evidence that an out-of-state handgun manufacturer that faced a product liability lawsuit fell within Kentucky’s long-arm statute, but the record is insufficient as to due process because the manufacturer’s “failure to timely meet its discovery obligations until shortly before the trial court’s ruling deprived [the appellant] of an ‘ample opportunity’ to conduct and complete jurisdictional discovery.”

  • November 04, 2025

    FirstEnergy Argues 6th Circuit’s Mandamus Grant Vacates Deposition Order

    CINCINNATI — In its response to investors’ petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc filed in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, FirstEnergy Corp. argues that the panel’s grant of FirstEnergy’s petition for mandamus vacating a lower court’s order includes the lower court’s deposition testimony order because there is no distinction between deposition testimony and investigatory documents from law firms retained by FirstEnergy.

  • November 04, 2025

    Special Master: Hospital Must Comply With Subpoena On Mesothelioma-Talc Study

    NEW YORK — A medical provider already ordered to comply with a subpoena seeking information related to the identities of individuals in expert Jacqueline Moline’s mesothelioma-talc studies cannot avoid compliance with an identical subpoena in a different case, a special master in New York said in recommending that the court grant a motion to compel.

  • November 03, 2025

    DOJ Subpoena Seeking Gender- Affirming Care Patient Data Quashed By Federal Judge

    SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge granted a gender-affirming care provider’s motion to quash a U.S. Department of Justice subpoena that sought patient medical and communications data, holding that the subpoena was politically motivated, overbroad and an abuse of investigative authority; in the same order, the judge denied the provider’s motion to seal proceedings but granted its motion to strike a DOJ praecipe that improperly introduced new evidence in violation of local rules.

  • October 31, 2025

    9th Circuit To Rehear Forfeiture Case Involving Discovery Failures En Banc

    SAN FRANCISCO — Ordering en banc rehearing, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals vacated a 2-1 ruling that affirmed a trial court’s decision to strike a man’s claim opposing forfeiture of more than $1 million, which was seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in light of his refusal to comply with repeated orders to provide additional responses to discovery interrogatories to establish his standing.

  • October 31, 2025

    4th Circuit Affirms Default, Exclusion Rulings, $811M Judgment In Scheme Case

    RICHMOND, Va. — Affirming that entities and individuals behind a purported bond scheme that targeted immigrants facing deportation must pay approximately $811 million in restitution and penalties, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a revised opinion concluding in part that entry of default judgment was an appropriate sanction for a “panoply of . . . discovery misconduct and failure to participate in this litigation”; the panel also upheld exclusion of proposed witnesses and exhibits as a proper remedy for nondisclosure.

  • October 29, 2025

    Delaware Vice Chancellor Allows Challenge To Asbestos Trust Record Rules

    WILMINGTON, Del. — Companies frequently named in asbestos litigation likely have only one avenue to obtain information on plaintiffs’ asbestos trust claims crucial to the defense of suits and may continue with their challenge to trust rules that would preserve those filings for only a year, a Delaware vice chancellor said in denying a motion to dismiss.

  • October 29, 2025

    Merits Briefing In Subpoena Case Concludes; High Court Sets Argument

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument for Dec. 2 in a dispute concerning a non-self-executing subpoena for information including the identity of pregnancy center donors, and merits briefing concluded with the filing of three amicus curiae briefs by entities that — like the respondent, New Jersey’s attorney general — urge the high court to affirm the challenged ruling against the center operator.

  • October 28, 2025

    Magistrate Grants Motion To Compel Discovery In ‘Upcoding’ Insurance Fraud Suit

    KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee federal magistrate judge granted in part a motion to compel discovery in a suit filed by UnitedHealthcare Insurance Co. and related entities alleging that medical staffing companies were “upcoding” claims, resulting in millions of dollars in overpayment, finding that the staffing companies failed to show the “disproportional” nature of the discovery request for production (RFP) related to financial reports regarding the impact of coding on profits.

  • October 27, 2025

    Motion To Compel Granted In RICO Suit Over Fraudulent No-Fault Claims

    BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York federal magistrate judge on Oct. 23 granted an insurer’s motion to compel a response to a subpoena issued to a nonparty owned by one of the individual defendants in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit alleging that individuals, medical providers and physicians participated in a multimillion-dollar fraudulent scheme to bill the insurer for medically unnecessary services, finding that the documents sought through the subpoena are relevant to the suit.

  • October 24, 2025

    Split Panel Affirms Denial Of Arbitration In German Discovery Dispute

    PHILADELPHIA — Addressing a question of first impression, a split Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed an order denying a bid by third-party litigation funders to compel arbitration of an application for discovery for use in Germany because the discovery application does not qualify as a “civil action” under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), while a dissenting judge said the case should be remanded for a “second look.”

  • October 22, 2025

    3rd Circuit: Judge Failed To Explain Denial Of DMCA Subpoena Sought By Streamer

    PHILADELPHIA — A Delaware federal judge should have explained the reason for denying a YouTube and Twitch streamer’s motion for a subpoena requiring Google LLC and another platform to identify certain allegedly infringing users under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, vacating the judge’s dismissal and remanding for further proceedings.

  • October 21, 2025

    Judge: J&J Won’t Get Access To Asbestos Expert’s Lab But Can Depose Employee

    TRENTON, N.J. — Allowing Johnson & Johnson entities to inspect expert William Longo’s laboratory at this stage would be too burdensome, but they may depose one of his employees on past testing methods, the judge overseeing the federal multidistrict talc litigation in New Jersey said Oct. 20 in partially sustaining objections to a special master’s ruling.

  • October 17, 2025

    Judge Won’t Hasten Damages Deadline, Says Anthropic Must Face Copyright Claims

    SAN JOSE, Calif. — In a pair of rulings, a federal judge in California said she would not hasten previous deadlines for music publishers to produce damages estimates and that the artificial intelligence copyright claims against Anthropic PBC may proceed.

  • October 17, 2025

    In Fee Case, Colorado High Court Rules 6-1 That ‘Citizen’ Includes Newspaper

    DENVER — With the chief justice dissenting, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed and remanded a lower court’s judgment in a Colorado Open Meetings Law (COML) case, ruling in part that a newspaper “falls within the meaning of the word ‘citizen’” as used in the law “and is therefore entitled to seek attorney fees if it prevails in a COML action”; it also reversed a ruling that any attorney-client privilege concerning an executive session was waived.

  • October 16, 2025

    Mont. High Court: Pa. Law Applies To Reporter’s Subpoenaed Records On Tainted Water

    HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court on Oct. 15 ruled that a lower court erred when it found that Montana’s Media Confidentiality Act (MMCA) applied to a reporter’s records that were the subject of a subpoena in litigation brought by a hydraulic fracturing company against a media outlet related to a news story about groundwater contamination from fracking operations that affected a family in Pennsylvania.  The high court reversed and remanded the matter, ruling that the lower court “must apply the Pennsylvania Shield Law and the qualified reporter’s privilege to the subpoena and determine whether all or some of the documents sought are privileged under Pennsylvania law.”

  • October 16, 2025

    Motion To Compel Discovery Partly Granted In Software Data Sharing Class Dispute

    MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota federal magistrate judge on Oct. 15 granted in part a motion to compel discovery for production of documents and responses to interrogatories by a health care provider in a putative class suit filed by former and current patients alleging that the provider collected and shared patient medical data with third parties through use of pixel software developed by Meta Platform Inc., finding that the request for production related to social media use is “relevant to” the claims of the patients and the provider’s defenses.

  • October 16, 2025

    Judge Finalizes $50,000 Sanction For Disclosures To U.S. Labor Department

    OAKLAND, Calif. — Noting that the parties in a recently certified class action over alleged underpayment for out-of-network behavioral health treatment decided not to request oral argument after considering her tentative sanctions ruling, a California federal judge on Oct. 15 finalized an order for a law firm representing the plaintiffs to pay $50,000 for disclosures to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that she found constituted “a knowing and intentional breach of” a stipulated protective order.

  • October 15, 2025

    Investors Seek Clarification That Mandamus Grant Doesn’t Vacate Deposition Order

    CINCINNATI — Investors filed a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, seeking clarity and confirmation that the panel did not vacate the lower court’s deposition testimony order when the panel granted FirstEnergy Corp.’s petition for mandamus and found that investigatory documents from law firms retained by FirstEnergy are protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.

  • October 15, 2025

    Respondent Urges U.S. High Court To Affirm That Subpoena Case Is Unripe

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Filing an Oct. 14 merits brief in a case the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider, New Jersey’s attorney general argues in part that the ruling the operator of pregnancy centers seeks would turn “every quotidian subpoena dispute into a federal case — a result not even the Federal Government can stomach, as it demands a bespoke exception for its own administrative subpoenas.”

  • October 15, 2025

    Plaintiff Must Provide Discovery Showing Audible Subscription Was Unwanted

    SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on Oct. 14 granted a motion by Amazon.com Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary Audible Inc. to compel responses by a putative class action plaintiff to interrogatories supporting “her central legal theory” that the defendants violated California’s unfair competition law (UCL) by enrolling her in an Audible subscription and charging renewal fees without consent.

  • October 14, 2025

    OpenAI, News Plaintiffs Reach Agreement Ending ChatGPT Output Preservation

    SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI entities will no longer have to preserve all ChatGPT outputs after reaching an agreement with news plaintiffs about the scope of what must be saved for copyright litigation consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

  • October 14, 2025

    New York Federal Judge Orders Talc Study Author To Participate In Discovery

    NEW YORK — A New York federal judge denied a motion by an asbestos plaintiffs’ expert to quash a subpoena for documents and deposition testimony in a discovery dispute with Johnson & Johnson spinoff Pecos River Talc LLC, finding that the requested discovery is relevant and would not be burdensome to produce.

  • October 14, 2025

    Suboxone Judge Tells Parties To Explain Failure To Comply With Discovery Order

    CLEVELAND — The judge overseeing the Suboxone film multidistrict litigation told certain parties, both plaintiffs and defendants, to show cause why they should not be held in contempt for failing to comply with a discovery order and ordered them to appear at a show-cause hearing on Oct. 30.