This put up is from the non-Reed Smith facet of the weblog.
At present we talk about two discovery orders from a case within the Northern District of California, Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc. On this case, Plaintiff, a California resident, alleged that she was burned by a pores and skin remedy she acquired in Taiwan with the Thermage CPT machine manufactured by Defendant. Plaintiff sought expansive discovery from Defendant whereas on the identical time attempting to limit discovery plainly related to her personal claims for her damages. The courtroom didn’t purchase it.
The primary ruling addresses discovery relating to different fashions of the machine. Lin v. Solta Med., Inc., No. 21-CV-05062-PJH, 2023 WL 8374740 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2023).
In written discovery, Plaintiff sought “all grievance information” and “all communications” regarding “any THERMAGE DEVICE.” Plaintiff argued that these supplies had been related to what the producer knew in regards to the alleged defects and the propensity of the units to trigger burn accidents and what steps the producer took in response. Plaintiff’s pores and skin remedy was in 2019, however Plaintiff sought grievance information for any earlier technology of the machine going again to 2002.
Per the courtroom’s apply, the events introduced the dispute by joint letter. The Plaintiff actually didn’t do herself any favors by not complying with that course of, as a substitute asserting that the “areas of dispute are too quite a few and sophisticated to sufficiently describe on this transient letter.” Id. at *2.
On the deserves of the dispute, the courtroom agreed with Defendant that discovery requests “needs to be restricted to supplies in regards to the mannequin or technology of machine at challenge within the grievance—not any machine with the Thermage title on it.” Id. A ruling excluding proof of different product fashions at trial could be a strong win. This one’s even higher—to not should undergo the expense of the invention in any respect.
On this identical case, Defendant extra lately had one other good discovery ruling, this one involving discovery of social media posts. Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26892 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 15, 2024).
Plaintiff alleged that she was a social media influencer and sought damages for misplaced wages to the tune of $4 million, alleging that due to her burns she suffered “cancelled contracts for work as a social media influencer and advertising skilled.” Id. Throughout discovery Plaintiff produced all posts that she stated “both point out the incident or Plaintiff’s accidents, or that depict or talk about Plaintiff’s accidents in any manner.” Id. However she resisted manufacturing of different social media posts.
The courtroom agreed with Defendant that Plaintiff needed to do a full manufacturing of the Plaintiff’s Instagram accounts—not simply those who point out or depict her accidents. This included not solely Plaintiff’s public account, however her personal Instagram account as properly. The courtroom agreed that these posts had been “extremely related” to each her declare for misplaced wages as a social media influencer and her declare for emotional accidents. Id.
This could be a case of a plaintiff now regretting overinflating the attain of her social media affect, however the result’s proper. It’s black-letter regulation that any piece of a plaintiff’s alleged injury calculation is the right topic of discovery, no matter what on-line kind it might take.
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