Federal Decisions Looked to in E-Discovery Area.
Vasquez v. Calif. School of Culinary Arts, Case No. B250600 (2d Dist., Div. 2 Aug. 27, 2014) (unpublished) is an example of how a litigant seeking documents from non-party Sallie Mae really set up a discovery battle very well. The litigant sent a first subpoena, drawing an objection to which the litigant responded by narrowing the requests via a second subpoena to target a very selective subset of documents, even offering to pay non-party reasonable costs of compliance. Sallie Mae once again objected to the second business document subpoena, moved to quash, and lost—and with the lower court awarding successful litigant $11,487 in attorney’s fees for having to deal with Sallie Mae’s unsuccessful opposition.
Sallie Mae’s appeal did not overturn the result. CCP § 1985.8 was the operative statute, with the appellate court looking to federal decisions because of the absence of California opinions on the topic. The fact that a non-party had to compile and produce information for a search index was not unreasonable in response to a subpoena, such that litigant’s win was no abuse of discretion under the circumstances where the opposing litigant had tried to be reasonable and “work it out.” (Gonzalez v. Google, Inc., 234 F.R.D. 674, 683 (N.D. Cal. 2006).)
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