The Virginia Defamation Law Blog
In a defamation case, like any other form of civil litigation, each side has a right of “discovery” to obtain information from each other and from third parties that may be relevant to the dispute. When the rules work as intended, there are no unexpected surpise witnesses or documents at trial–each side should be well aware of the information the other side intends to present at trial so they can plan accordingly. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 allows parties to “obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). This rule allows parties to obtain just about any form of evidence provided it’s relevant and not protected by the attorney-client privilege, work-product doctrine, or other privilege. And for purposes of discovery, most courts apply a lower standard for relevance than they would apply at trial. Information may be discoverable even if only slightly relevant to the case, provided the burden of obtaining and producing the information is justified by the needs of the case. Generally speaking, the less money there is at stake in the litigation, the more relevant the information will have to be before a court will order a party to produce it in discovery. The rules dictate the courts consider “the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit” in assessing whether to compel a party to incur expense or burden in producing information not easily accessible. (See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1)).
You can also obtain information from third parties who aren’t involved in the litigation if they are in possession of relevant information. This is accomplished through the issuance of subpoenas. (See Fed. R. Civ. P. 45(1)(A)(iii)). Courts typically won’t require third parties to incur substantial burden or expense unless the information is highly relevant and not obtainable from other sources, as third parties aren’t involved in the case and have no stake in the outcome. When a subpoena is directed to a third party, “courts must give the recipient’s nonparty status ‘special weight,’ leading to an even more ‘demanding and sensitive’ inquiry than the one governing discovery generally.” (See Va. Dep’t of Corrs. v. Jordan, 921 F.3d 180, 189 (4th Cir. 2019)). In particular, courts will consider (1) the extent to which the requesting party actually needs the information, measured by whether the information is likely to offer value over and above what the requesting party already has; (2) whether the requesting party can obtain the same or comparable information from other sources; and (3) the extent to which the request will impose a substantial burden on the recipient or others who might be affected (such as cost, overbreadth, privacy, and confidentiality interests).