QUESTION
Can Dick seek production of documents and order Joe to produce old emails ?order Bob to produce old emails?
Asked on Jun 27th, 2015 on Business Litigation - Massachusetts
More details to this question:
Dick and Joe were friends and business pals. In 2012 the relationship soured and Dick sued Joe. As is the custom, Dick's lawwyer sends Joe a request for production of documents which asks that Joe produce copies of all emails ex-changed between Dick and Joe for the last few years. My question: Dick has all of the emails he got from Joe and has all ot the emails he sent to Joe. I have a recollection that tells me the following: A party making a request for documents from his opponent, ask for document that he already has Dick has copies in his computer of all the emails he sent to Joe and has copies in his computer of all the emails he received from Joe. I seem to remember a rule that said that a requesting party cannot ask for copies of documents from his opponent if the requestor already has those same documents in his own computer or in his own files .
1 ANSWER
There may be different rules in different jurisdictions, and the answer may also differ depending on the particular material being sought and the burden of producing it, but in general the fact that a party has copies of the documents he/she is seeking is not a valid objection to production (although, to be fair, I see lawyers raising such an objection all time.) How can Dick possibly know that he has all the emails and one wasn't accidentially deleted? How can he be sure that Joe will not claim that some other email was exchanged between them, or that he never received some relevant emails? Of course, if you're talking about thousands of emails here so that the cost of searching and producing them was truly prohibitive, the answer might be different, but as a general matter, I think Joe would have to produce the emails.
Answered on Jun 29th, 2015 at 10:30 AM