Mealey's Discovery : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Discovery

March 18, 2025
Company Urges Review Of Genetic Testing Ruling In California Asbestos Case

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A trial court evaluated a motion to compel simple and potentially conclusive genetic testing in a mesothelioma case under the standard for admissibility when it should have done so under the standard for relevance, a company told the California Supreme Court in a petition for review.
March 13, 2025
Judge Allows States Discovery Into DOGE’s, Musk’s Authority In Firings, Data Access

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fourteen states that sued over purported violations of the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution were given the opportunity to take expedited discovery on actions taken by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), its personnel and Elon Musk, with a District of Columbia federal judge on March 12 finding that their discovery requests were, largely, narrowly tailored and pertinent to their forthcoming preliminary injunction motion.
March 13, 2025
DOL, DOGE, Others Ask Court To Rethink Expedited Discovery In Unions’ APA Suit

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Labor (DOL), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other parties accused of improperly providing access to citizens’ confidential information to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) filed a motion asking a District of Columbia federal judge to reconsider his recent grant of expedited discovery to the plaintiff labor unions and nonprofits, asserting that changes to the “factual predicates” have “obviate[d] the need” for such discovery.
March 12, 2025
Federal Circuit Affirms Invalidity Of Wearable Tech Patents, Moots ITC Proceedings

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel rejected a wearable technology patent holder’s argument that the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) violated its discovery obligations before holding that all challenged claims in the company’s patents were invalid during inter partes review (IPR) proceedings brought by Apple Inc., affirming the invalidity finding.
March 11, 2025
Expedited Discovery, Dismissal Sought In States’ Suit To Halt DOGE’s Actions

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Elon Musk, President Donald J. Trump and the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) moved in District of Columbia federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of 14 states opposing Musk’s involvement in DOGE’s activities, asserting that because Musk is an adviser, not an officer of the United States, the plaintiffs’ claim under the appointments clause of the U.S. Constitution is doomed.
March 11, 2025
Vermont High Court Affirms Quash Of Insurer Subpoena In J&J Talc Coverage Suit

MONTPELIER, Vt. — An insurer trying to escape liability for a verdict against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in an asbestos-talc bodily injury mass tort litigation improperly served an out-of-state subpoena on a regulatory department for information filed by the company’s captive insurance company without first establishing that the information it sought was not available from other nonconfidential sources, the Vermont Supreme Court found, upholding a trial court's decision to quash the subpoena.
March 10, 2025
California Court Won’t Review Ruling Limiting Genetic Testing In Asbestos Case

OAKLAND, Calif. — A California appellate court on March 7 denied a writ petition challenging a trial court’s ruling limiting genetic testing, which the petitioner claimed “undermines the search for truth” by improperly restricting discovery to only potentially admissible evidence and by eliminating the possibility that the testing could produce dispositive evidence of causation, according to a docket entry.
March 10, 2025
Tornado Cash Developer Denied Certiorari Over Expert Witness Disclosure Procedures

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two questions over expert witness disclosures that were raised by a cryptocurrency software protocol developer will go unaddressed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied Roman Storm’s petition for certiorari in its March 10 order list.
March 10, 2025
Company Defends Claim As Parties Set Discovery Rules In Asbestos Expert Dispute

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary opposed reconsideration of a ruling allowing a single claim to proceed against three experts it accuses in a lawsuit of disparagement and false advertising based on their article linking mesothelioma to exposure to talc, while the parties asked a federal judge in Virginia to permit bifurcated discovery, with the first phase involving fact questions and the second involving damages, which the subsidiary also opposed.
March 10, 2025
Asbestos Defendant Denied Robust Genetic Testing Seeks Appellate Review

OAKLAND, Calif. — A state trial court ruling limiting genetic testing “undermines the search for truth” by improperly restricting discovery to only potentially admissible evidence and by eliminating the possibility that the testing could produce dispositive evidence of causation, a company defending a California asbestos action tells an appellate court in a petition for writ of mandate.
March 07, 2025
5th Circuit Affirms Refusal To Impose Statutory ERISA Penalty In Plan Documents Row

NEW ORLEANS — In an unpublished March 6 per curiam opinion saying in part that the appellant didn’t “establish that the district court abused its discretion in” determinations made following a bench trial, a Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed discovery and other rulings for the sponsor and administrator of an Employee Retirement Income Security Act medical benefits plan in a documents dispute.
March 05, 2025
J&J Subsidiary, Experts Move For Bifurcated Discovery In Asbestos Study Suit

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary and three experts it accuses of disparagement and false advertising based on an article they published linking mesothelioma to exposure to talc asked a federal judge in Virginia to bifurcate discovery, with the first phase involving fact questions and the second involving damages.
March 05, 2025
11th Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment, Discovery Rulings Against STD Claimant

ATLANTA — Upholding discovery and summary judgment rulings for a disability insurer in a March 4 unpublished per curiam opinion, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel rejected the claimant’s arguments that the lower court “did not properly apply [the appellate court’s] framework for evaluating” claims asserted under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and should not have denied her request for “discovery outside the administrative record.”
March 03, 2025
Mass. High Court Upholds Procedural Rulings In Rape, Murder Case, Denies New Trial

BOSTON — Nine years after a jury convicted Philip Chism for the rape and murder of his teacher, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied his quest for a reduced sentence and a new trial, upholding most of a trial court’s discovery and expert witness rulings and finding that any errors that occurred were not prejudicial to Chism.
February 28, 2025
Judge Won’t Let AI Copyright Plaintiffs Set Search Terms

SAN FRANCISCO — Plaintiffs’ efforts at relitigating issues they lost undermines rulings designed to prevent delays, and the parties appear to be “taking turns to simply conjure up something about which to fight,” a judge overseeing consolidated federal copyright litigation in California involving artificial intelligence said Feb. 27 in denying requested discovery.
February 28, 2025
Iowa High Court: Psych Tests May Be Disclosed Only To Licensed Psychologists

DES MOINES, Iowa — A trial court erred in granting an insurance company’s motion to compel production of a plaintiff’s psychological test materials in a dispute over uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM) benefits, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled, finding that state law unambiguously holds that discovery of such materials may be made only from one licensed psychologist to another.
February 28, 2025
2nd Circuit Affirms Quashing Of New York Discovery Subpoenas For German Suit

NEW YORK — The plaintiff in a German lawsuit over purported securities violations did not establish her right to subpoena her opponent in that suit for discovery in New York federal court under U.S. Code Title 28 Section 1782, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, finding that the necessary factors of Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. had not been satisfied.
February 28, 2025
3rd Circuit Panel Upholds Dismissal Of Vaccine Refusal Case For Discovery Defiance

PHILADELPHIA — A panel of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has affirmed the dismissal with prejudice — as a sanction for refusing to cooperate with discovery requests and comply with discovery orders — by a Pennsylvania federal court of a former employee’s lawsuit alleging that her employer failed to accommodate her religious objection to being vaccinated for COVID-19 in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
February 28, 2025
2nd Circuit: Section 1782 Discovery Request Broad, Peripheral To Probate Suit

NEW YORK — A Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a trial court’s denial of a man’s foreign discovery request under U.S. Code Title 28, Section 1782, finding no abuse of discretion in its holding that the requested materials were only peripherally related to the remaining issue in a Brazilian probate proceeding and an “extremely broad” fishing expedition for an as-yet-unfiled criminal suit over his brother’s alleged hiding of assets.
February 27, 2025
Petitioners In Baltimore Bridge Collapse Suit Ordered To Be Deposed In U.S.

BALTIMORE — A federal chief magistrate judge in Maryland on Feb. 26 granted claimants’ motion to compel petitioners and their management agents and employees to submit to depositions in a Maryland federal court in an exoneration lawsuit brought by the owner and technical manager of the ship that allided with and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
February 27, 2025
Federal Circuit Won’t Reverse Discovery Order In Memory Chip Patent Fight

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A California federal judge did not err when ordering a defendant-appellant technology company to turn over 73 pages of source code to plaintiff-respondent entities in a patent infringement dispute over flash memory chips, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Feb. 26, denying a petition for a writ of mandamus.
February 25, 2025
Exclusion Of Expert Was Too Harsh Of A Sanction, Tennessee Appeals Court Says

JACKSON, Tenn. — A Tennessee trial court failed to show that a woman’s violation of a discovery order “was contumacious, intentional, blatant, or otherwise so egregious as to justify the harshest sanction available, i.e., exclusion of [her] expert and dismissal of her lawsuit,” a state appeals court held, reversing the exclusion of the witness and award of summary judgment.
February 24, 2025
Judge Denies Some Motions On Jurisdiction, Orders Asbestos Discovery

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A distribution agreement specifically referencing Rhode Island as a market keeps a supplier in an asbestos-talc suit, and the alleged failure to produce discovery in another case warrants jurisdictional discovery into related companies as well, a justice in the state said, partially granting motions for dismissal.
February 21, 2025
Citing ‘Glacial Pace,’ Plaintiffs In AI Copyright Suit Seek To Compel Discovery

SAN FRANCISCO — While the company behind the Claude artificial intelligence promises to produce discovery before upcoming deadlines, its “glacial pace” over the last four months necessitates a court order compelling the production by certain deadlines to ensure that it doesn’t benefit from further delay, plaintiffs in a copyright suit tell a federal judge in California in a Feb. 20 letter brief.
February 21, 2025
4th Circuit Finds Pro Se Plaintiff Was Wrongly Denied Post-Stay Discovery

RICHMOND, Va. — A trial court abused its discretion in denying a plaintiff’s request for discovery as untimely in a negligence suit against the United States, a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, holding that even if a second request served after the lifting of a discovery stay was untimely, a pre-stay request was not.