Source: https://www.classactioncountermeasures.com/articles/discovery/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 15:54:09+00:00

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Professor Suja Thomas (of Oddball Cases fame) has jumped into the debate over proportionality in discovery with a post over at Prawfsblawg. The debate, prompted by the upcoming amendments to FRCP 26, asks whether a party should be able to withhold discovery on the grounds that it is disproportionate to the needs (and the amount in controversy) of a given case.
It’s a tale as old as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA"): defendant Janssen Pharmaceuticals sent out a fax reporting on the reclassification of its drug Levaquin for insurance purposes. The plaintiff sued it for violating the TCPA, claiming the fax was an advertisement; Janssen responded that the content of the fax was informational. It won a motion to dismiss, but the court allowed the plaintiff to file an amended complaint.
Don’t Forget the Motion to Stay – Thornton v. DaVita HealthCare Partners., Inc.
In Thornton v. DaVita HealthCare Partners., Inc., No. 13-cv-00573-RBJ-KMT, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145458 (D. Colo. Oct. 8, 2013), the plaintiffs filed a class action alleging various causes of action in the wake of a recall of certain brands of dialysis equipment. The case grew rapidly, and eventually involved several consolidated complaints.
Plaintiffs filed a class action complaint against defendant Tournament One Corp. in Nevada state court. Tournament One removed the case to federal court, and immediately filed a Motion to Compel Arbitration and a Motion to Dismiss, or, in the alternative, to stay the case pending the arbitration motion.
Amber Pieloor filed a class action against her bank, the Gate City Bank of North Dakota. She accused the bank of re-sequencing a number of her financial transactions. Re-sequencing occurs when a bank records transactions in an order other than that in which they were received. Accusing banks of re-sequencing has become common; and it appears that some banks, in fact, have re-sequenced debits–charging the largest ones first before moving on to smaller debits–in order to maximize the number of overdraw fees they can charge.
What Counts as “Making Copies” – Costs under Johnson v. Allstate Insurance Co.
In 2007, four customers of Allstate Insurance Company sued it, alleging that it used outdated scoring algorithms to calculate their premiums, in violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act. They were later joined by another 19 named plaintiffs. Three years later, in 2010, the judge in the case denied certification and dismissed twelve of the named plaintiffs (leaving eleven total). Seven months later, the remaining eleven named plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims with prejudice.
Typicality tends to be a useful, if not always used, way of framing various class action issues. Its primary purpose is to ensure that the class action is really a representative lawsuit rather than just an individual case with pretensions. Given the rulings on typicality so far, it’s worth asking how defendants might argue it more effectively.
Randall v. Rolls-Royce Corp., 637 F.3d 818, 821 (7th Cir. 2011).
Daffin v. Ford Motor Co., 458 F.3d 549 (6th Cir. 2006).
Deiter v. Microsoft Corp., 436 F.3d 461, 466–67 (4th Cir.
One of the tough things about defending class actions is the fact that discovery is asymmetrical. Some plaintiffs use the fact that corporate defendants generate huge numbers of documents to inflict significant costs on the defense by serving large numbers of marginal relevance to any class claims.
So, when plaintiffs withhold actually relevant information, that tends to add insult to injury.
I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend. This week, we take a brief look at a number of opinions that were decided last week, none of which are revolutionary, but all of which are useful to defendants at some stage of the class action. Think of it like a Memorial Day barbecue, a little something for each course.

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