Discovery disputes are often fought at the margins, and the question for any attorney responding to written interrogatories is how much information is necessary to be responsive. In an order Tuesday, the Business Court disapproved of one common tactic: the generalized Rule 33(c) answer.
In case you haven’t answered interrogatories in a while, recall that Rule 33(c) allows
If you have exchanged three-page letters with opposing counsel and held a short teleconference with dueling soliloquies on the scope of discovery relevance, you probably have complied with the meet & confer requirement that is a prerequisite to filing a motion to compel under North Carolina Rule 37 and any motion or objection related to discovery
Not responding to Requests for Admissions is dangerous. Rule 36 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure say that a request is admitted if not answered, and that “any matter admitted under [Rule 36] is conclusively established unless the court on motion permits withdrawal or amendment of the admission.”
Two different panels of the
The Court stayed discovery pending its resolution of a Motion to Dismiss. There is no discussion in the very short Order of the reasons for the Court’s decision, but the briefs are useful.
MassMutual’s Brief in Support of Stay of Discovery
The Plaintiff in Batlle v. Sabates didn’t respond to Defendant’s discovery for more than eight months. She served her responses only on the day that Defendant’s motion for sanctions came on for hearing.The trial court granted the motion for sanctions and dismissed the Complaint as a result of the discovery violation.
The Plaintiff argued on
The Business Court sanctioned the Defendants in Clark v. Alan Vester Auto Group, Inc., 2009 NCBC 18 (N.C. Super. Ct. July 17, 2009) for spoliation of evidence.
The destruction of evidence involved "Cover Sheets" that the Defendants prepared whenever they sold a car. The Plaintiff contended that an entry on a Cover Sheet referring
The Business Court today granted a Motion to Compel and delivered a harsh sanction to the Plaintiff: dismissal with prejudice of its Complaint. The case is TelSouth Solutions, Inc. v. Voyss Liquidation Company, LLC.
Plaintiff’s failure to timely respond to discovery, standing alone, might not have warranted dismissal, but It had been preceded
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There isn’t much out there in the way of a road map from North Carolina’s state courts on how lawyers should fulfill their obligations to produce electronically stored information. So you might want to take notice of a little bit of direction in today’s Order from the Business Court in Hill v. StubHub, Inc.
By
This case involves sanctions under Rule 26(g) of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure, which provides that an attorney’s signature on a discovery response is a certification that it is "consistent with the rules," and "not interposed for any improper purpose," and "not unreasonable or unduly burdensome or expensive."
The Court determined that sanctions
The North Carolina Business Court delivered a significant opinion on discovery sanctions today in Azalea Garden Board & Care, Inc. v. Vanhoy, 2009 NCBC 9 (N.C. Super. Ct. March 26, 2009). If you are litigating in the Business Court, you’d better read this one, which emphasizes the duty of lawyers to cooperate with one