This submit is from the non-Reed Smith aspect of the weblog.
At the moment we talk about two discovery orders from a case within the Northern District of California, Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc. On this case, Plaintiff, a California resident, alleged that she was burned by a pores and skin therapy she obtained in Taiwan with the Thermage CPT machine manufactured by Defendant. Plaintiff sought expansive discovery from Defendant whereas on the identical time making an attempt to limit discovery plainly related to her personal claims for her damages. The courtroom didn’t purchase it.
The primary ruling addresses discovery concerning different fashions of the machine. Lin v. Solta Med., Inc., No. 21-CV-05062-PJH, 2023 WL 8374740 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2023).
In written discovery, Plaintiff sought “all criticism recordsdata” and “all communications” regarding “any THERMAGE DEVICE.” Plaintiff argued that these supplies have been related to what the producer knew in regards to the alleged defects and the propensity of the gadgets to trigger burn accidents and what steps the producer took in response. Plaintiff’s pores and skin therapy was in 2019, however Plaintiff sought criticism recordsdata for any earlier technology of the machine going again to 2002.
Per the courtroom’s follow, the events offered the dispute by joint letter. The Plaintiff definitely didn’t do herself any favors by not complying with that course of, as an alternative asserting that the “areas of dispute are too quite a few and complicated to sufficiently describe on this transient letter.” Id. at *2.
On the deserves of the dispute, the courtroom agreed with Defendant that discovery requests “ought to be restricted to supplies regarding the mannequin or technology of machine at difficulty within the criticism—not any machine with the Thermage identify on it.” Id. A ruling excluding proof of different product fashions at trial can be a strong win. This one’s even higher—to not should undergo the expense of the invention in any respect.
On this identical case, Defendant extra just lately had one other good discovery ruling, this one involving discovery of social media posts. Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26892 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 15, 2024).
Plaintiff alleged that she was a social media influencer and sought damages for misplaced wages to the tune of $4 million, alleging that due to her burns she suffered “cancelled contracts for work as a social media influencer and advertising and marketing skilled.” Id. Throughout discovery Plaintiff produced all posts that she stated “both point out the incident or Plaintiff’s accidents, or that depict or talk about Plaintiff’s accidents in any method.” Id. However she resisted manufacturing of different social media posts.
The courtroom agreed with Defendant that Plaintiff needed to do a full manufacturing of the Plaintiff’s Instagram accounts—not simply those who point out or depict her accidents. This included not solely Plaintiff’s public account, however her non-public Instagram account as effectively. The courtroom agreed that these posts have been “extremely related” to each her declare for misplaced wages as a social media influencer and her declare for emotional accidents. Id.
This might be a case of a plaintiff now regretting overinflating the attain of her social media affect, however the result’s proper. It’s black-letter regulation that any piece of a plaintiff’s alleged injury calculation is the right topic of discovery, no matter what on-line type it could take.
