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Mealey's Discovery

  • May 09, 2025

    Alabama Supreme Court Remands Soup Burn Negligence Suit For Further Discovery

    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Inconsistencies and questions in the record about the identity of the owner and operator of a market and deli where purportedly scalding soup was purchased demonstrate that a plaintiff’s requested deposition of the defendant’s owner is crucial to her case, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled, concluding that a trial court exceeded its discretion by denying the plaintiff’s motion to continue a summary judgment hearing for the purpose of conducting such discovery.

  • May 09, 2025

    On De Novo Review, Judge Rules That LTD Claimant Is Physically Disabled

    LOS ANGELES — Taking issue with numerous aspects of an insurer’s decision to terminate long-term disability (LTD) benefits, a California federal judge concluded that “[a] preponderance of the evidence shows [that the claimant’s] medical symptoms related to spondylolisthesis, lumbar region status post lumbar fusion, and chronic pain render him disabled under the terms of the Plan.”

  • May 09, 2025

    Justice Refuses To Dismiss Archdiocese’s Claims In Sexual Abuse Coverage Dispute

    NEW YORK — A New York justice denied general and excess liability insurers’ motion to dismiss the Archdiocese of New York’s claims for breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and violations of New York General Business Law Section 348 in a coverage dispute arising from close to 1,700 underlying sexual abuse lawsuits, rejecting the insurers’ contention that the breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing claim is duplicative of the breach of contract claim.

  • May 09, 2025

    Quash Of Subpoenas On State Agency In Traffic Stop Suit Affirmed By 5th Circuit

    NEW ORLEANS — A trial court correctly quashed subpoenas served on a Texas state agency by two men who alleged that their constitutional rights were violated in a traffic stop, with a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruling that the agency did not waive its sovereign immunity despite voluntarily participating in discovery.

  • May 07, 2025

    Texas Supreme Court Finds Deposition In UIM Suit Not Proportional At Present Stage

    AUSTIN, Texas — Granting a petition for mandamus relief filed by State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the Texas Supreme Court found that a policyholder that sued for underinsured motorist (UIM) benefits was not entitled to depose the insurer’s corporate representative while declaratory claims are still pending so as to avoid duplications of discovery and unnecessary expenses at this stage of the proceedings.

  • May 06, 2025

    Defendant: New Discovery Shows Moline’s Talc-Only Study Was False

    NEW YORK — Recent revelations show the identities of participants in asbestos expert Jacqueline Moline’s study on causation were always relevant but were withheld in an effort to further a litigation scheme, and the court should deny a motion for sanctions and instead award costs and fees associated with attempts to obtain what is now clearly relevant and discoverable evidence, an asbestos-talc defendant told a federal judge in New York on May 5.

  • May 06, 2025

    New Hampshire High Court Sets Essential Need Standard For Victims’ Private Records

    CONCORD, N.H. — Reversing a trial court ruling ordering production and in camera review of a sexual assault victim’s counseling and medical records, the New Hampshire Supreme Court established a guideline that obtaining in camera review of “confidential or privileged records held by private organizations” requires a defendant to “demonstrate an essential need for the records.”

  • May 06, 2025

    Georgia Enacts Measure Changing Discovery, Damages In Injury, Death Actions

    ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a wide-ranging bill substantially amending how the state’s courts handle civil practice, discovery and tort liability in the state; the measure stays discovery when a party moves for dismissal prior to filing an answer, limits the ability of injured parties to argue at trial about the amount of noneconomic damages in bodily injury and wrongful death cases and limits the recovery of attorney fees.

  • May 06, 2025

    ‘Fractured’ 4th Circuit Avoids Ruling On Constitutionality Of Geofence Warrants

    RICHMOND, Va. — In a 126-page ruling encompassing eight concurring opinions and one dissent, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals majority concluded that any errors associated with a detective’s geofence warrant, in which he obtained cell phone location information that led to the arrest of an accused bank robber, were made in good faith and did not merit suppression of the obtained data.

  • May 05, 2025

    Maine High Court Affirms $23,906 Attorney Fee Award In Discovery Dispute

    PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has affirmed a $23,906 attorney fee awarded in a discovery dispute between two companies, agreeing with a trial court that one party didn’t act in good faith in trying to block a majority shareholder’s discovery of financial documents.

  • May 05, 2025

    FBI Wants Full 9th Circuit To Decide State Secrets Issue In Surveillance Suit

    SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States and two FBI personnel (government, collectively) filed a petition for rehearing en banc with the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, asking it to reconsider an “unorthodox” procedure a panel adopted that would permit a court to consider information covered by the state secrets privilege rather than fully excluding such information from a case entirely.

  • May 05, 2025

    Indiana High Court: Agency Must Provide White Paper To Lawyer

    INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Supreme Court determined that a legal paper that was created by an outside private entity for a state government agency does not constitute “intra-agency material” and, therefore, is not protected from disclosure by the deliberative material exception to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA).

  • May 02, 2025

    Pennsylvania Supreme Court Finds Mug Shot Requests Can Be Filled Only By Police

    HARRISBURG, Pa. — Reversing rulings by a trial court, an appeals court and a state agency, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that a mug shot is an “identifiable description” under state law and, therefore, can be disseminated in response to individuals’ requests only by a police department.

  • May 01, 2025

    J&J Entity Seeks Study Participants; Judge Won’t Reconsider Dismissal Ruling

    NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A federal judge on April 30 denied a motion for reconsideration of his ruling that a Johnson & Johnson entity adequately alleged that experts’ study linking mesothelioma to consumer talc disparaged the company and its products.  In a separate development, Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Pecos River Talc LLC asked a federal judge to compel the three asbestos experts to produce the identities of 75 study participants who reportedly developed mesothelioma solely after exposure to consumer talc products, saying that the evidence is necessary to the prosecution of its injurious falsehood claim and that no privacy issue or law precludes identification.

  • April 30, 2025

    New York High Court Denies Appeal In Asbestos Subpoena, Instructions Case

    BUFFALO, N.Y. — The New York Court of Appeals denied motion for leave to appeal in an asbestos case, turning away a challenge to a trial judge’s ruling quashing a subpoena seeking corporate testimony about events 50 years prior and a separate opinion affirming rejection of a jury instruction on an employer’s potential role as an intervening cause of a man’s mesothelioma.

  • April 30, 2025

    Parties Seek Discovery In Australia In Reinsurance Breach Of Contract Suit

    NEW YORK — The defendants in a breach of contract lawsuit ask a New York federal court to issue letters rogatory to obtain otherwise unobtainable information from an industrial machinery manufacturer and two of its employees in an Australian court as part of a gold mining equipment dispute over whether the defendants are direct insurers or reinsurers of the plaintiff.

  • April 29, 2025

    Magistrate Judge Rules On Discovery In EEOC, United HealthCare Vaccine Mandate Suit

    COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal magistrate judge in Ohio ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to “work with” United HealthCare Services Inc. in narrowing down which details of a fired work-from-home employee’s medical records should be considered when they confer on outstanding discovery disputes in a lawsuit alleging that United violated the employee’s rights when it denied her a request for a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and terminated her.

  • April 29, 2025

    Magistrate: Relator Must Provide All Alleged False Claims In FCA Kickback Suit

    SAN DIEGO — A California federal magistrate judge granted Abbott Laboratories’ motion to compel discovery into all the alleged false claims it purportedly submitted to the government in a suit alleging Abbott violated the False Claims Act (FCA) and state false claim laws regarding Abbott’s purported kickback scheme to induce hospitals and physicians to use an Abbott cardiac medical device, finding that Abbott is “entitled to know the specific false claims” against it.

  • April 28, 2025

    Citing Presumption Of Access, 6th Circuit Vacates Order Keeping Transcripts Sealed

    CINCINNATI — A trial court’s failure to explain why it maintained the seal on certain deposition transcripts in a settled securities lawsuit is not sufficient to overcome the presumption of openness in litigation, a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, reversing a ruling partly denying an intervenor newspaper’s motion to unseal the documents in the lawsuit, which was closed more than two years ago, and remanding for the lower court to make the proper determination “as to whether any parts of those transcripts meet the requirements for a seal.”

  • April 25, 2025

    Suboxone MDL Judge Names Cases For Bellwether Discovery

    CLEVELAND — The judge overseeing the Suboxone film multidistrict litigation has identified the 500 cases that were randomly selected for case-specific discovery.

  • April 25, 2025

    Nebraska High Court: Any Error In Sex Assault Discovery Sanction Was Harmless

    LINCOLN, Neb. — Affirming a man’s conviction for sexually assaulting his underage stepdaughter, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s claim of prejudice from a trial court’s imposition of a discovery sanction, finding that if there was any error by the lower court, it was harmless and would not have affected the conviction.

  • April 25, 2025

    Inmate Tells Supreme Court Obtaining Attorney-Client Calls Violates 6th Amendment

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — An inmate whose calls to his attorney were overheard and obtained by prosecutors filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to find that such intentional intrusion into the attorney-client relationship violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

  • April 24, 2025

    J&J Entity Wants Talc-Only Meso Study Participants Revealed

    NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Pecos River Talc LLC asked a federal judge to compel three asbestos experts to produce the identities of 75 study participants who reportedly developed mesothelioma solely after exposure to consumer talc products, saying the evidence is necessary to the prosecution of its injurious falsehood claim and that no privacy issue or law precludes identification.

  • April 22, 2025

    3rd Circuit Finds Sealing Of Documents In Bankruptcy Suits Governed By Statute

    PHILADELPHIA — The standard for sealing or unsealing a court document under a protective order in bankruptcy proceedings is determined by Section 107 of the bankruptcy code, a Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, remanding a bankruptcy court’s discovery order for consideration under the statute rather than under the common-law standard.

  • April 22, 2025

    Anthropic Says AI Copyright Action Too Unwieldy For Class Certification

    SAN FRANCISCO — An artificial intelligence copyright class action spans a century, would include more than five million works owned by various people, trusts and other entities and would require the court to decide ownership millions of times over, a company tells a federal judge in California in an opposition to certification.  In a separate letter brief, Anthropic PBC tells the court that the plaintiffs were misrepresenting a court’s order and the course and timing of discovery.