ST. LOUIS – An “unusually long” case against American Homepatient Inc. continues as the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in the Eastern Division decided to wait to rule on a man’s request for additional discovery and a motion to amend a protective order in a case over alleged unsolicited fax advertisements.
U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. ruled on the case on April 30, instead granting the plaintiff leave to file a supplemental memorandum to narrow his discovery request instead of granting or denying it.
Amid his ongoing lawsuit against American Homepatient, Alan Presswood, D.C., P.C., asked the court for additional discovery and a change to the protective order. The court denied both motions but did allow Presswood leave to file a supplemental memorandum to give a more-specific idea of his discovery request. He has 10 days to do so and the defendant has five days after his new filing to respond.
Presswood initially sued in 2014,and the issue of discovery has been at the forefront for most of the ongoing litigation. Now, the ruling states Presswood believes a search for RightFax data will show American Homepatient violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when it sent “unsolicited facsimile advertisements to [the] members of the putative class."
While Presswood said he’s been "diligent" with trying to get RightFax data, the defendant’s main concern is that Presswood could be aware of certain facts, but waited too long to act on them, the ruling states.
"Plaintiff is convinced defendant is obfuscating relevant information and has not hesitated to seek out as many of defendant’s records and witnesses as possible, and defendant is convinced plaintiff is engaged in a never-ending witch hunt—demanding total and unmitigated access to a range of sensitive information that is both inappropriate and costly to produce," the ruling states.
As for why the court denied Presswood’s claim, Limbaugh said, “It is ultimately plaintiff’s rather vague, open-ended request that compels this court to decide against granting his motions, however,” said Limbaugh.
The ruling states Presswood wants more discovery to order the defendant to produce “whatever witnesses are necessary” as well as depose an American Homepatient representative with at least 40 different topics.
“Discovery is not winding down after all this time; rather, plaintiffs seeks to ramp it up,” Limbaugh wrote. “The simple fact is, plaintiff’s request for more discovery lies in speculation.”
Considering this, the court simply gave Presswood leave to create a less-ambiguous discovery request.