Tagged: Discovery on Discovery

Despite the broad scope of discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, courts are generally reluctant to permit “discovery on discovery,” i.e., discovery requests related to a party’s efforts to search for, locate, preserve, and collect relevant electronically stored information (ESI). In a case brought against Wesleyan University (the “University”) by a student expelled for alleged cheating, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut recently declined to compel such discovery on discovery, where the plaintiff requested that the defendant identify and “catalog all of the devices on which responsive communications reside.” The discovery request was made well after the Rule 26 conference – discovery had been ongoing for nearly two years – and the plaintiff waited almost a full year after serving the requests to file her motion to compel. In light of these facts and the plaintiff’s failure to establish an “adequate factual basis” for requiring such discovery on discovery, the court denied portions of the plaintiff’s motion to compel. In Doe v. Wesleyan University, the plaintiff, a former student at the University, was expelled for allegedly cheating on her exams by improperly accessing the University’s “computerized learning management system” called “Moodle” during her exams. The University conducted an investigation and held an Honor Board proceeding, and the board decided...