If Dante had practiced law, there’s a good chance he would have added a tenth circle of hell—discovery for defense attorneys. Imagine being slowly crushed under a mountain of PDFs, emails from 2007, and inexplicably sticky banker’s boxes. Let’s face it, some of us could update our bios to include—professional document archaeologist.
Discovery was theoretically
Wouldn’t it be nice if all legal disputes could be sensible? But, alas, overreaching plaintiffs make work, make motions, and often make craziness. Sometimes those overreaching plaintiffs can be the government, and that makes things even worse.
In Hayek Medical Devices (N.Am.) v. Vermont, 2025 Vt. Super. LEXIS 117, 2025 LX 12055 (Vt. Super.
On the internet, “because reasons” is the default when you don’t have the time or energy to explain why something is correct, but you are sticking with your viewpoint nonetheless.
It is the opposite of what our profession expects from lawyers and the courts: We all are supposed to explain, with crystalline clarity, why our
This is not the first time we have posted about Gallego v. Tandem Diabetes Care, Inc. About six weeks ago we told you all about the excellent preemption decision that dismissed the entire case with prejudice except for a piece of the negligent design claim. On that, plaintiff was given thirty days to file
Late last year we said that almost every legal conference these days has a session on artificial intelligence. It is de rigeur. That is also true with respect to litigation funding. It is a hot issue. Our Inn of Court (University of Pennsylvania) did a presentation on litigation funding that, despite the fact that
This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.
We live in a “producer-pays” world. Our discovery system gives plaintiffs a windfall by allowing them to demand production of millions of dollars’ worth of documents and data and to impose those costs almost entirely on defendants. Now think about that in MDLs. Plaintiffs
Today we have a guest post from Chris Campbell, Stephanie Peatman, and Sarah Carrier, all of DLA Piper, following up on a subject we wrote about not too long ago – ediscovery for defendants, but involving plaintiff’s devices that directly keep track of relevant health information, not social media. The more
Today’s case — In re Tepezza Mkt’g, Sales Pracs., & Prod. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 3079, 2025 WL 81338 (N.D. Ill. Nov. Jan. 10, 2025) – doesn’t really break new ground on the substantive law, in fact it is a split decision. But it comes from an unusual procedural posture worth pointing out.
The
Back in 2008, we wrote a post, No, Bu shi, Non, Iie, Nada, Nyet…., collecting a significant body of law holding that overseas defendants are not required to translate, at their expense, documents prepared in their non-English home languages. The other day we came across Sessoms v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., ___ S.E.2d ___, 2024 WL 5249823 (N.C. App. Dec. 31, 2024), reversing yet another order that a foreign defendant pay for translating its own documents:
[W]e conclude the trial court erred by requiring the . . . Defendants to create new documents in English of documents already provided that are in the Japanese language. Rule 26 of our Rules of Civil Procedure allows a party to seek documents in the possession of the adverse party; it does not generally require the adverse party to pay for any said documents to be translated into the English language. In other words, there is no duty to produce documents that do not exist.
Id. at *2 (citation omitted). Sessoms was “persuaded by what we perceive to be the greater weight of authority in the United States that a party producing documents is not required to create new documents consisting of English translations of documents already provided.” Id. at *3. Sessoms cited eight cases exemplifying that “authority” – three of which were decided after our 2008 post. That suggests that the post could use an update.
So here’s that update.
Continue Reading Still Nyet, Defendants Not Required to Pay for Translation of Documents
This blog has long encouraged defendants in prescription medical product liability litigation to seek relevant ediscovery from plaintiffs. We even have an ediscovery cheat sheet with almost 250 favorable decisions either allowing defense-side ediscovery in personal injury cases or else sanctioning plaintiffs for spoliating sought-after electronic data. But we confess, we’ve been focused so firmly on social media and smartphones, where ediscovery from plaintiffs originated, that we have ignored the rising popularity of fitness trackers, Fitbits, smart watches, smart rings and similar devices (even clothing) being marketed to people who may eventually become plaintiffs. These products create a great deal of health-related (and other) information that is of obvious relevance in mass (and other) tort litigation.
What we found is that surprisingly few defendants seem to be seeking this type of information – at least there are very few decisions involving discovery of these devices.
Continue Reading Ediscovery for Defendants – The New Frontier