There are common bad practices of responding to discovery. One often sees responses that are incomplete and only partially respond to the request. The rules of civil procedure are quite explicit that an “incomplete answer is to be treated as a failure to answer.” Such incomplete responses subject the responder to a motion to compel, […]
Posts Tagged ‘Discovery’
How automatic discovery has changed my family law practice
It’s been six months since the South Carolina Supreme Court mandated automatic discovery in family court. I didn’t expect this rule change to change my practice. It has. As I’ve noted before, serving discovery can be a way of showing the opposing party that one is serious about the litigation and that one has given […]
Answering discovery you first object to
A pet peeve of mine is attorneys who begin discovery responses with a list of boilerplate objections. Recently I received interrogatory answers from two separate attorneys who I actually respect with such lists. One response began: This response is submitted by Plaintiff subject to and without in any way waiving or intending to waive, but […]
Automatic discovery in family court–finally
Effective today (May 1, 2017) the South Carolina Supreme Court has amended Rule 25, SCFCR, to authorize automatic discovery in family court. In 23 years practicing under the prior rule, I only had three cases in which a motion for discovery was contested. In one case the family court authorized discovery. In the other two […]
Best practices in responding to requests for production
I spend a lot of time struggling to get opposing attorneys to fully respond to requests for production. Often it’s hard to tell if the response is adequate because often the response is not clear. Vague request for production responses can be treated as a failure to respond. See Rule 37(a)(3), SCRCP (“an evasive or […]
Obtaining electronically stored information in electronically stored format
A common idea among litigators is that an excellent way to hide damaging information is to produce it with a whole bunch of innocuous information. There’s even an informal term for it: data dumping. Producing thousands of pages of financial or cell phone records in a paper format requires the requesting party to laboriously search […]
“I don’t know/recall” may be the best interrogatory or deposition answer you can get
I lectured last week to recent law school graduates about family law discovery. Part of this lecture discussed Rule 37(a)(3), SCRCP which reads: “Evasive or Incomplete Answer. For purposes of this subdivision an evasive or incomplete answer is to be treated as a failure to answer.” I remarked this rule meant that they should not […]
Using opposing parties’ evasive discovery responses against them
Often opposing parties will respond to discovery with evasion: giving answers that respond to some, slightly different allegation; providing lengthy responses to “yes/no” questions without really stating “yes” or “no”; citing a lack of knowledge to answer a question that, given their litigation posture, they really should be able to answer. The Rules of Civil […]