On Thursday, the parties in the UFC Antitrust lawsuit will conduct a hearing to determine a number of discovery issues, most importantly, the status of Dana White’s phones. The hearing will take in federal court in Vegas before a magistrate which hears these types of discovery disputes.
Plaintiffs have filed a Motion to Compel the Discovery of Electronically Stored Information seeking information from four phones from Dana White. For those wondering, the phones identified are an iPhone 4, an iPhone 6 and two Nokia flip phones. It believes that the phones all include information for which White conducted business which may be related to Plaintiffs’ claims. The motion and reply to Zuffa’s opposition suggests that Zuffa did not comply with the discovery process, violated the Court Order regarding discovery and did not preserve evidence when it was notified that information would likely be requested. As it appears that certain information from White’s phones are no longer available, the Plaintiffs request an order to serve subpoenas on White’s telecommunications service providers in an effort to obtain communications logs to show the “times and dates messages were sent and received in White’s devices.”
Plaintiffs Motion to Compel by JASONCRUZ206 on Scribd
Plaintiffs claim that Zuffa has used the fact discovery cut-off to “stonewall” discovery. Fact discovery was due on May 1, 2017, but it was clear that due to the continued meeting and conferring over documents and the issues with obtaining documents from non-parties, it would not be complete. Realistically, this may not be any parties’ fault, and therefore it is left to the Magistrate to decide what is fair.
Plaintiffs Reply to Motion to Compel by JASONCRUZ206 on Scribd
In its opposition to the Motion to Compel, Zuffa states it “has produced over 650,000 documents, including 44,928 text messages to Plaintiffs.” The tone of the opposition is of a party that has made its best efforts to comply with discovery while making Plaintiffs appear overbearing and zealous in its request for additional discovery. This includes Zuffa claiming to have to “re-reproduce” all text messages due to the fact that Plaintiffs claim that some text were not originally produced. Zuffa hired vendors to conduct forensic analysis of the information from White’s phone in preparing to turn over the information to Plaintiffs. Moreover, it states it has complied with the standing order from the Court and the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure. It also claims that Plaintiffs failed to “meet and confer” in good faith.
Defendant’s Response to Motion to Compel by JASONCRUZ206 on Scribd
Payout Perspective:
As suggested in its Reply Brief (the seconded embedded document above), it would appear that the request to serve a subpoena on White’s telecommunications provider (e.g. Sprint, ATT, Verizon) would add another layer to the discovery process and add more time to discovery. Moreover, one would think that with other parties objecting to the subpoenas that a telecommunications provider would object to the same. One would think privacy matters and that the request would be overbroad and produce non-relevant information would be obstacles Plaintiffs would have to obtain the information. Plaintiffs are hoping that the Magistrate will see that Zuffa attempted to stall discovery and will allow this request (or some version) as a way to “make things right.” We will see on Thursday.
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