The judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery slammed Musk for not providing the text messages that were requested. The Musk side's document production was cited as aglaring deficiency in the order.
Plaintiff's Fourth Discovery Motion identifies clear deficiencies in Defendants' document production. Third parties produced text messages with Musk that Musk himself did not produce, and Musk's own production of text messages revealed glaring deficiencies. As just one example, Defendants produced two texts sent to Musk from Robert Steel of Parella Weinberg Partners on June 17 at 9:57 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. The 9:57 a.m. text asks a question. The 10:15 a.m. text—stating "Ok. Got it. ..."—implies that Musk responded. Assuming that Musk's response was not telepathic, one would expect some evidence of it in Defendants' document production. But Defendants provided none by the deadline for substantially completing document discovery.
The approach to answering interrogatories left much to be desired. After being ordered to respond to interrogatories that required Defendants to identify persons with knowledge of relevant facts, Musk's side did a bad job of it. The judge wrote that Musk could have provided that information a long time ago.
Many of the deficiencies that were complained of in the Fourth Discovery Motion have been cured by defendants. They accuse the person of jumping the gun but I don't think that's true. I am able to understand why the person needs relief. The majority of the burden of discovery has been born by the person.
She wrote that Musk's side agreed to produce from just two custodians, but that they had to provide an "onerous "historical snapshot" that was the subject of the second discovery motion. The defendants had less to do but still didn't meet their obligations. TheyTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia
As of last night's substantial completion deadline, more than 41,000 documents had been produced by the social media site. The company said it had reviewed more than 210,000 documents.
AdvertisementThe ruling and one other were issued by the same person. The Musk motion to compel production of Slack messages from additional people was one of the rulings that pointed out the criticism of the billionaire who has been trying to pull out of an agreement to buyTwitter.
The defendants gave the impression that they were looking for limited custodians, only to later say that they didn't mean it. There is no time for joking in this case. Parties need to be able to rely on each other's good faith proposals for the discovery process to work.
The back-and-forth between the parties' lawyers was tense. She wrote that the correspondence shows that defendants abandoned their initial demand of 42 custodians in favor of a request for only eight. Musk changed his mind and demanded that all the custodians give him their messages.
Even if the representations were made unintentionally, they cannot re-trade now.
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