Friday, January 8, 2021
Circumventing discovery: Can plaintiffs’ attorneys use CCPA access requests to obtain unsupervised discovery?
Litigants traditionally look to the rules of civil procedure in order to get discovery in a litigation. Plaintiff’s attorneys have, however, begun to try to circumvent restrictions within the discovery rules that are designed to limit the number, type, and timing of information requests, by sending out “access requests” on behalf of their clients under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Nothing within the legislative history of the CCPA suggests that it was intended to replace or supplant the discovery process set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and in the California Code of Civil Procedure. Furthermore, one interpretation might be that forcing a civil litigant to disclose personal information outside of judicially proscribed and monitored discovery processes could improperly “restrict a business’ abilit