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Article: Kicking discovery orders upstairs: you may not have to wait until the end of your case to raise discovery issues on appeal. Special writs and other remedies can get harmful or onerous discovery orders before an appellate court - before they cause irreparable harm to your case.
- Article from:
- Trial
- Article date:
- June 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 American Association for Justice, formerly Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA®). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The discovery process lets parties in a lawsuit examine relevant, nonprivileged information while keeping expenses and burdens as low as possible. (1) The trial court's role is to ensure that the process does not favor one party over another or give either side a tactical advantage. As one court said, "'The discovery process was not designed to be a scorched-earth battlefield upon which the rights of the litigants and the efficiency of the justice system should be sacrificed to mindless, overzealous representation of plaintiffs and defendants.'"(2)
But sometimes, discovery orders are wrong--they might direct parties to withhold critical evidence or force them to ...