4. "In other words, Plaintiffs' efforts to narrow the scope of discovery were justified.
Defendants next protest a statement by Plaintiffs that the ruling by Judge Hillman striking Defendants' discovery as overly broad demonstrated that the efforts to narrow discovery was justified. (Doc. 184, p. 9). Defendants quote a passage in which Judge Hillman observed that Plaintiffs were taking an overly narrow view of the appropriate scope of discovery. However,Judge Hillman did not identify any specific respect in which Plaintiffs were being too restrictive. His ruling was to grant Plaintiffs' motion for a protective order, to scrap Defendants' discovery requests, and to order that new ones be served that were more carefully limited to the issues in the case. Thus, Plaintiffs' position was substantively justified.
It takes me awhile to see through some of these ploys.
I had previously noticed that Hillman did not "scrap" my discovery requests by granting their motion. He did that independently of their motion.
Now it has occurred to me that their motion to limit the scope of discovery was trying to use Rule 26(c) to narrow what would otherwise be permissible discovery. But
Hillman's order ordered me to reserve my requests to produce because of fault on all sides, because he felt I had gone beyond what is permissible under Rule 26(b)(1), not because he was granting their motion.
The plaintiffs weren't trying to bring discovery within the permissible limits. They were trying to reduce what is legally permissible. See the difference?
Rule 26(b)(1): Permissible scope of discovery.
Rule 26(c)(1): Narrowing the scope of discovery so that what would normally be permissible is no longer permissible.
Thus, the plaintiffs have no basis for their bogus claim that their efforts to limit the scope of discovery were justified.
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Topic: Why is the information here so onesided and partial? (Read 11851 times)
