Posted on 07/28/2020 11:52:33 AM PDT by Signalman
You were interested enough in my opinion to post to me first, but ok.
I'm interested in the feel of my toilet paper, also.
The confidential information sought still has to be either relevant, or apt to lead relevant evidence. The case you cite involved a former plaintiff's co-counsel who claimed he was entitled to part of a tort recovery obtained after he left the case, Of course that is discoverable.
If a CNN news truck collides with your car, and you sue on a negligent retention of a dangerous driver claim, you can probably get a copy of settlement agreements where his driving got CNN sued in the recent pass. But you cannot, successfully anyway, demand copies of confidential settlement agreements involving on air hosts sued for sexual harassment, by airily telling the judge 'Your honor, opposing counsel's argument goes to admissibility, not discoverability.' Sexual harassment settlement agreements are neither relevant to your claim negligent retention claim, nor likely to lead to relevant evidence.
Of course a plaintiff in a car wreck case can’t get discovery of the defendant’s settlement of unrelated sexual harassment cases. I don’t see how that translates to a defamation defendant not getting discovery of a plaintiff’s settlement of clearly-related, contemporaneous defamation cases.
A closer analogy would be CNN in a car wreck case, in which you are claiming a back injury, asking you to produce your settlement of a case against a different defendant from another wreck that happened the same day where you also claimed a back injury. Would a judge order you to produce it? Of course he would. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. And those car wreck cases are not as closely related as Sandmann’s defamation cases, where he is claiming the same injury to his reputation from essentially the same libel in each case.
I’m just amazed he’s even on television. Every time I see him I think, “well, his mom must have slept with somebody important.”
And I’m not talking about his looks. I’m talking about the quality of his thought process and what actually comes out of his mouth. It makes me want to apply for his job, because even I could do it a lot better. Dead serious.
It would be hilarious. I watch the talking heads on CNN as well as Laura and Tucker. The latter two are several orders of magnitude above the CNN nutballs both in presentation quality and quality of information. It’s laughable.
So, under your theory, say plaintiff is involved in two car wrecks on the same day, and brings separate lawsuits against both drivers, and/or their employers? If defendant number 1 settles, and substantially overpays then defendant number 2 gets to force disclosure of that fact via discovery, gets to credit that overpayment against the injuries he inflicted, and serendipitously gets to be held responsible for less than 100%, or even none, of the injuries he inflicted?
Both defendants could of course discover the extent of physical injuries, and there would be lots of room for litigation about which defendant is responsible the back pain the plaintiff testifies about at trial, but if the torts are separate, and the recoveries are separate, then the sum defendant 1 settled for is not discoverable by defendant 2, as it is neither relevant, nor likely to lead relevant evidence.
Of course that does not mean a judge might not order it produced, just that it should not be so ordered.
I think your theory would be correct in a case where the relationship between the defamatory statements is more than temporal. X sends a defamatory tweet about Y, with a hashtag of a trending story, meaning he has reason to believe the tweet will be republished. A-W retweet the defamatory tweet. There the damages arise out of the publication, and republication, of the same tweet, and arguably A-X jointly caused one injury. But separate Washington Post and CNN stories are not the same.
If it’s an indivisible injury, of course they can assert a settlement credit. They can also potentially use the settlement for impeachment purposes. Maybe the defendant would be successful in that argument and maybe not, but they get to find out the terms of the settlement so that they can present their evidence and make their argument.
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the scope of discovery is broad and a party does not have to make a threshold showing that a document might help the party’s case or will even be admissible at trial in order to be entitled to discovery of that document, particularly when it is a non-privileged document like a settlement agreement. We don’t require parties to prove their case before they can see the other party’s documents.
Sandmann’s claim is for injury to his reputation. He only has one reputation. The money he received for injury to his reputation by a different publication of substantially the same defamatory statement is obviously relevant. It may not ultimately be admissible, but it is absolutely discoverable.
The sea was angry that day my friends....
Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.
I doubt it is $25K. Who mentioned that figure?
He was asking for $250mil. He didn’t get that, but the fact that they settled probably means he got a percentage of that. And even just 1% is $2.5 million.
10 or 20 percent is a great payday.
We will have to agree to disagree.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.