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Mealey's Discovery

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.
April 22, 2025
Motion To Compel Granted In Trademark Row Involving Health Care Fraudster

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A New York federal magistrate judge on April 21 granted a pharmaceutical company’s motion to compel in a Lanham Act trademark infringement case, seeking documents related to fee arrangement between defense counsel and his client, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud in a related case, finding in part that “the requested information is relevant” because plaintiffs in Lanham Act suits may recover a defendant’s profits.
April 22, 2025
Discovery Spat In Bad Faith Indemnity Row Involves Reserve, Reinsurance Information

STATESVILLE, N.C. — In a reply brief urging a North Carolina federal court to compel certain discovery, the plaintiff in a bad faith suit over an excess liability insurer’s alleged duty to indemnify argues, among other things, that the insurer “makes bare assertions that reserve information and communications with reinsurers are subject to attorney-client privilege or attorney work product protection on a categorical basis.”
April 22, 2025
Talc Tort Funding Targets Must Respond To Subpoena, Magistrate Judge Says

JACKSON, Miss. — A federal magistrate judge in Alabama granted in a text-only order a motion for reconsideration of a stay of discovery in a dispute between asbestos-talc law firms and then issued a written order denying a motion for a protective order and said nonparty litigation funding sources must respond to subpoenas.
April 18, 2025
California Supreme Court Grants Motion To Dismiss Genetic Testing Petition

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Supreme Court on April 17 granted an unopposed motion to dismiss a petition for review contending that a trial court improperly evaluated a motion to conduct simple and potentially conclusive genetic testing in a mesothelioma sufferer’s asbestos case under the standard for admissibility when it should have done so under the standard for relevance.
April 17, 2025
Colorado High Court: Discovery Sought In Hospital Lien Class Suit Isn’t Relevant

DENVER — In its second time considering a trial court’s order compelling discovery responses from an accident victim, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that the items sought by a hospital operator were not relevant to the plaintiff’s class claims under Colorado’s hospital lien statute and were not proportional to the needs of the case.