Extract from Mike Hamilton’s article “Case Law Alert: Court Rules No to Re-Production of Investigatory Data in Volkswagen Clean Diesel Civil Case”
In Re: Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” (N.D. Cal., April 24, 2018) reinforces the importance of requesting data “with reasonable particularity” under the amendments to FRCP 34, including when requesting data from prior cases and/or criminal investigations.
Overview
In this much publicized class action lawsuit, a large group of Volkswagen dealers (“Dealers”) allege that Bosch LLC (“Bosch”) and Volkswagen conspired to cheat vehicle emission tests.
The Dealers requested that Bosch produce documents which were previously produced to government agencies investigating the emissions fraud. Bosch objected, stating that the government investigations were not equivalent to the claims made in this civil lawsuit, making the request outside the scope for production.
Subsequently, dealers moved to compel production of these government documents.
