Opinion ID: 4530507
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Limited Discovery

Text: ¶10. With the motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim still pending,4 the Madison County chancellor allowed the parties to engage in limited discovery aimed at the personal-jurisdiction question. See Long v. Vitkauskas, 287 So. 3d 4 Following the transfer, the defendants renewed their motion to dismiss for improper venue in the Madison County Chancery Court, arguing Madison County also was not an available venue under Section 75-24-9. But this motion was later withdrawn following this Court’s decision in Purdue Pharma L.P. v. State, 256 So. 3d 1, 5 (Miss. 2018), which held that, if “MCPA’s venue statute provides no choice of venue for foreign corporations,” instead of dismissing the action, a chancery court must “look to the general venue statute for chancery court actions.” And if “the general venue statute for chancery courts also provides no venue for foreign corporations, [courts] must turn to the general venue statute for civil actions, Mississippi Code Section 11-11-3.” Id. 7 171, 178 (Miss. 2019) (noting a trial court, when ruling on a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction may “consider ‘affidavits, interrogatories, depositions, oral testimony, or any combination of the recognized methods of discovery’” (quoting Revell v. Lidov, 317 F.3d 467, 469 (5th Cir. 2002))). The parties stipulated that this discovery would require the production of confidential material. On June 30, 2017, the chancellor entered a protective order allowing the parties to file this material under seal. Consequently, although this is not a confidential case but instead is a matter brought on the public’s behalf, most documents in the record from this date forward—including the chancellor’s final order and the briefs on appeal—were filed under seal.