The parties disagreed over whether a party had complied with a prior discovery ruling. Judge Albright concluded that the party had complied with court’s order by providing a witness prepared to testify about certain subjects, and denied the request for additional document production.
The court declined to exclude the referenced products from the case on timeliness grounds. While the order does not provide detailed grounds for the court’s ruling, it appears that the plaintiff’s expert amended his report after receiving a “correlation chart” regarding products ordered produced by the court, and the court declined to exclude the products as not charted.
Judge Albright denied the motion to compel witnesses for the full scope of each of the noticed FRCP 30(b)(6) deposition topics, but without prejudice to re-raising later. He also agreed that the defendant did not need to produce a deponent on four of the five topics (out of 80) it had objected to.
Plaintiff DIRECTV sought expedited discovery prior to the scheduling conference to serve third-party subpoenas. The court denied the unopposed motion, citing the plaintiff’s failure to request injunctive relief as it contended it would, or to attach the proposed subpoenas to allow the court to determine whether the requested scope of discovery was appropriately balanced between the scope of discovery and the privacy interests of defendants.
This case is only tangentially IP, but terminating sanctions are so rare that it’s a useful example of when conduct in discovery is so extreme that it justifies striking a party’s answer and entering default judgment.
Sometimes an issue the parties think of as a claim construction issue is one that the court thinks of as a summary judgment one.
Judge Albright overruled the objections to Judge Gilliland’s order denying production of certain documents claimed to be attorney work product following their submission for in camera review.
Judge Yeakel found that the plaintiffs had provided evidence that the defendant may have had specific, suit – related contacts with Texas, which were sufficient to permit jurisdictional discovery.
Judge Hightower granted in part the motion to compel certain information.
This discovery order uses the new format required in OGP 4.2
