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In this lesson, you will learn what can be discovered during litigation and what is excluded from the discovery process.
You may discover
Any information that is reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence is deemed discoverable.
You may not discover
Privileged information or information that isn’t relevant to the case.
Transcript
Any information reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence is discoverable.
Now that\’s a very broad description. And that\’s a good thing because parties in a lawsuit are given a lot of leeway to prove or disprove the claims, counter claims, and affirmative defenses in the case.
You can ask a witness what he saw heard or did related to the issues in the case. You can ask for a list of potential witnesses.
You can ask for the identity of anyone who might even potentially have relevant information about an issue in your case.
You can get very detailed information about the running of a business.
Yes. That\’s right. As a party to a lawsuit, You can do this even with big corporations.
You can ask for internal email correspondences.
You can ask for accounting records, employee handbooks, on and on and on. You can really get into someone\’s, business if you take my meeting with discovery.
Now what can\’t your discovery?
This is a shorter list. You cannot discover information that is irrelevant to issues in the pending case. In other words, don\’t go crazy and start asking someone the color of their underwear on a particular day unless for some reason that was relevant to the case.
You also cannot discover information that is privileged.
Privilege is a bar to the disclosure of certain types of communications.
Privilege allows a party to refuse to provide evidence about a certain subject or to bar such evidence from being disclosed even by a cooperative witness.
A claim of privilege sometimes requires a protective order. And that\’s an order that instructs one party to cease discovery of a particular piece of information because that information is privileged.