2 Firms Each Sanctioned $500 After Defendant Complains of ‘Egregious Discovery Gamesmanship’
A federal judge in Seattle has ordered the law firms of Baker Donelson and Corr Cronin to pay $500 each for trying to use an apparent misunderstanding as a litigation “weapon,” reports the ABA Journal.
The judge said the law firms had filed a frivolous motion for partial summary judgment that claimed their opponent, software maker Medstreaming, missed a discovery deadline by responding to a request for admissions by email.
Baker Donelson and Corr Cronin had claimed that a request for admissions that the defendant’s software performed improperly was automatically deemed admitted because the response was improperly served via email. Those “admissions,” they claimed, entitled the plaintiffs to a ruling on their breach of contract claims.
The judge said the plaintiffs’ lawyers had tried “to use as a weapon in this litigation whatever misunderstanding occurred regarding how discovery requests and/or responses would be exchanged.”
