Monday, December 09, 2019

U.S. v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (9th Cir. - Dec. 9, 2019)

Do you know how hard it is to get a federal district court to focus in detail on the legitimacy of your discovery requests?  Incredibly hard.

Do you know how hard it is to get the Ninth Circuit to focus in detail, and resolve, the permissible scope of particular interrogatories and document requests?  Impossible.

Yet here's proof positive that the impossible is sometimes possible.  An appeal that's entirely about whether five particular discovery requests were permissible.

The district court thought they weren't.  The Ninth Circuit disagreed.

One of the rare discovery fights you'll see in the Court of Appeals.