NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Whats happening here is Molson a expert witness to a lawsuit filed against Amazon by the CA Attorney General Office. They've issued a subpoena for information (as is their right under the legal system) for additional discovery. A good chunk of it appears to be a repeat of the same discovery the state AG office is or has gathered, but they're also looking for anything related even tangentially to Molson's relationship with Amazon (emails, messages etc) as well. The allegation here would more closely be that Amazon is trying to abuse the discovery process by overreach.
I'm willing to give Molson the benefit of the doubt in saying "lawsuit" when likely its subpoena. I imagine this is a stressful time for Molson and it can be hard to get the nuances of the legal system portrayed right. The docs he posted make it all much more clear
I like reading his tweets so I'm inclined to be generous, but just to be clear –he's the Chairman of an IP Enforcement firm [0], so the difference between a subpoena and a lawsuit should be elementary for him.
Part of the complaint being made by Molsen is that even after two days of deposition, he's being asked to return for more, for is critique in a blog post. Is that considered normal in a case like this? If it is normal, are there some protections to keep a witness from continuously being deposed to the point that it is abuse, or is that something that one side would take up with the judge?
I'm not a lawyer, but i've been an expert witness in a few cases. Usually if you're coming back it's because they felt something was left out or they found new information elsewhere and want to ask questions around it. Usually though a second run is all about breaking you down as a witness.
I've had one time where I was called back in, it was related to new discovery that had been provided related to a security breach. It was from a third party and I had not been privy to the documents up to that point. Ultimately they had little or no bearing on the case but I did have to state I have no knowledge for a bunch of questions asked.
I think for OPs case, they're trying to find more gotchas. I would request through a lawyer to limit scope and or mitigate being harassed.
Who knows though, the amount of screwy games that lawyers play blew my mind.. until i remembered they bill hourly.
I was probably over broad in my comment. Most of the lawyers I work with are actually reasonable and trying to solve the issue as you're implying. It's generally the larger cases / boutique firms that are pressing the numbers.
What a lot of people don't realize is that on class actions where laywers are often times lumped into one big case, most of them make peanuts if they're not the primary firms. You guys have a lot of gamble to with billing depending on your structure. So all in, I get it.
Yeah man, it’s a tough racket. Some lawyers are paid entirely on contingency. Personally I think the economics of this gig are ridiculous but I certainly don’t have a better model.
Generally in discovery a party is permitted to request anything ["reasonably calcu^H^H^H^H^H^H^H] "any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case."
So aything relevant to CA's claims against Amazon, or Amazon's defenses, is fair game. If your client is being sued for a Zillion dollars, and you don't dig up every possible way to discredit the plaintiff's key witnesses, you're not doing your job. This means asking about every possible connection between the plaintiff and the witness, their possible biases and gaps in credibility.
I'm not a lawyer and would never give legal advice.
I'm not making judgement as to what is or isn't, simply am trying to clarify what he's getting at. I imagine to Molson this feels like Amazon is trying to bury them in discovery
One of my professors was an expert witness on cases related to CPU cache design IP. He got paid $1000/hr. He said the opposing side would pick through every past resume he had looking for anything incorrect, and would interview his former co-workers and even neighbors I think looking for dirt on him.
There's no actual evidence in this thread of Molson being served with an individual lawsuit. He appears to be subpoenaed and deposed in his capacity as a CA AG witness. Nowhere is he being sued by Amazon.
If by he you mean Molson, then you're right. He's an expert witness in the suite brought by CA against Amazon. There is no individual suite against him.
they're also looking for anything related even tangentially to Molson's relationship with Amazon (emails, messages etc)
But Amazon should already have that information, seeing as it was party to that relationship? Can't he just answer with "go search your own archives" (or legalese to the same effect) for those things?
Not a lawyer. I imagine there's various forms of discovery and various ways it comes up. But one thing to note is that you can be victim of the pains of discovery as an innocent third party.
"Hey random vendor, backed by the full force of the Court, you are compelled to spend time and money getting us x,y,z and/or lawyer time arguing about it."
Yes, there's definitely remedies if things go too far. Good luck with those, though. But the point is that you don't have to be the plaintiff or the respondent to get tied up in an expensive, time-consuming process.
There's a civil lawsuit involving the State of California and Amazon. When you have a civil case, you can get discovery from third parties using subpoenas, which seems to be what's happening here.
