Plaintiffs in Johnson antitrust lawsuit file statement prior to status conference

The continued question of discovery persists in the Johnson Antitrust lawsuit. A status conference is being held on Thursday, August 6th and the Plaintiffs have filed a Pre-Conference Statement prior to the conference.

The question of what information Zuffa has in its possession is the big question. In its latest filing (below) they seek to clarify to the Court the status of discovery in light of Zuffa’s brief regarding discovery.

Plaintiffs Pre Conference Statement Re Status Conference by MMA Payout

First, Plaintiffs address the issue of the court-appointed forensic expert screwing up his job and being dismissed by the court.

Certainly Mr. Wedin’s mistake is something we will address in a later post. But, Plaintiffs contend that White deleted messages from his iPhone 6S as written in footnote 2.

Plaintiffs have proposed protocols to the UFC to perform analysis of the deleted data. The UFC declined to participate due to not knowing specifics according to the Plaintiffs.

The filing advocates for Plaintiffs use of its search terms (essentially words or phrases to use when searching the data collections harvested by the UFC in order to find relevant documents). Plaintiffs argue that the UFC “abdicated their obligation to identify the vast majority of specific production gaps that Plaintiffs identified…” Plaintiffs contend that the UFC is focusing on quantity of the production and not the specific information that Plaintiffs are seeking.

Plaintiffs continue to advocate for its “proposed search terms” to obtain the relevant information from the UFC’s custodial files.

With respect to Competitor materials, Plaintiffs state that the UFC “fails to demonstrate that it has made a complete production of such materials and that Plaintiffs’ search term proposal, which includes competitor names as terms that the UFC did not previously apply.” Plaintiffs only cite to one commissioned document related to ONE Championship.

Payout Perspective:

The above is a portion of the key information that the Plaintiffs are seeking from the UFC. On Thursday, we will see what the Court says about further production of documents. While Plaintiffs would like “search terms” used from the UFC data collections, the company is pushing back on the notion citing that it has already been produced.