Boilerplate Discovery Objections

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how lawyers abuse “meet and confer” requirements to obstruct civil discovery. This time, let’s talk about lawyers obstructing discovery by responding to discovery interrogatories themselves, rather than by having their client answer.

It’s a common progression of events:

1. Lawyer A serves a bunch of interrogatories on Lawyer B.

2. Lawyer B responds with a bunch of boilerplate objections. (See my prior post for more.)

3. Lawyer A threatens to file a motion to compel.

4. Lawyer B “answers” some of the requests either:

a. by sending a letter that generally discusses discovery (rather than a formal discovery answer actually answering the specific interrogatories) or

b. by serving a formal discovery answers signed by the lawyer (rather than signed by the party).

Tellingly, small and mid-sized casualty insurance firms that litigate and try cases all day long rarely insult plaintiff’s counsel intelligence or the court’s time with such nonsense. I wish I could say the same of the big corporate law firms I’ve dealt with, but they seem to do this as a matter of routine, repeatedly sending vague letters about discovery that never answer the discovery requests. Often, they act insulted when I gently point out that their vague letters and emails mean far less to me than their client’s sworn answers.

It may seem pedantic to just quote the Rules at length, but I have come to believe that a significant percent of lawyers — including highly-paid litigators — either haven’t read the rule or don’t care about their contents.
Continue Reading A Lawyer’s Letter Is Not A Substitute For Interrogatory Answers

“If there is a hell to which disputatious, uncivil, vituperative lawyers go, let it be one in which the damned are eternally locked in discovery disputes with other lawyers of equally repugnant attributes.” Dahl v. City of Huntington Beach, 84 F.3d 363, 364 (9th Cir. 1996) (quoting Krueger v. Pelican Prod. Corp., No. CIV-87-2385-A (W.D. Okla. Feb. 24, 1989).

The First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, better known as Philadelphia state court, is one of the most efficient high-volume civil justice court systems in the country. Part of this success owes to the “Day Forward” program implemented years ago, which years ago began pooling together all the cases of a given year together for management by a single judge, particularly when it comes to discovery disputes. (Years later, in 2009, the American College of Trial Lawyers began recommending “A single judicial officer should be assigned to each case at the beginning of a lawsuit and should stay with the case through its termination.”)

To avoid an endless hell of discovery-related oral arguments, the “team leader” judges schedule one day each week to batch together all of their discovery motions for that week. By the time 9am rolls around, the bulk of motions end up either abandoned, withdrawn, or entered by agreement, after which the contested motions are heard one after the other. Litigators love to complain about discovery court, because sitting through even 15 minutes of someone else’s oral argument when you’re ready for yours can feel like spending a day in a traffic jam, but I tend to sit back and listen, to see what works and doesn’t work for the lawyers, and to see the judge’s general approach to the discrete issues presented.

Last week, I listened to a dozen or so motions, and virtually all of them involved a party unreasonably objecting to discovery.
Continue Reading Boilerplate Objections And “Good Faith” Requirements Are Ruining Civil Discovery