This publish is from the non-Reed Smith facet of the weblog.

Immediately we focus on two discovery orders from a case within the Northern District of California, Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc.  On this case, Plaintiff, a California resident, alleged that she was burned by a pores and skin remedy she obtained in Taiwan with the Thermage CPT system manufactured by Defendant.  Plaintiff sought expansive discovery from Defendant whereas on the identical time making an attempt to limit discovery plainly related to her personal claims for her damages.  The court docket didn’t purchase it.

The primary ruling addresses discovery relating to different fashions of the system.  Lin v. Solta Med., Inc., No. 21-CV-05062-PJH, 2023 WL 8374740 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2023).

In written discovery, Plaintiff sought “all criticism information” and “all communications” regarding “any THERMAGE DEVICE.”   Plaintiff argued that these supplies have been related to what the producer knew in regards to the alleged defects and the propensity of the units to trigger burn accidents and what steps the producer took in response.  Plaintiff’s pores and skin remedy was in 2019, however Plaintiff sought criticism information for any earlier era of the system going again to 2002. 

Per the court docket’s follow, the events offered the dispute by joint letter.  The Plaintiff actually didn’t do herself any favors by not complying with that course of, as a substitute asserting that the “areas of dispute are too quite a few and sophisticated to sufficiently describe on this temporary letter.”  Id. at *2.

On the deserves of the dispute, the court docket agreed with Defendant that discovery requests “must be restricted to supplies regarding the mannequin or era of system at situation within the criticism—not any system with the Thermage identify on it.”  Id. A ruling excluding proof of different product fashions at trial can be a stable win.  This one’s even higher—to not should undergo the expense of the invention in any respect.

On this identical case, Defendant extra lately had one other good discovery ruling, this one involving discovery of social media posts.  Lin v. Solta Medical, Inc., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26892 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 15, 2024). 

Plaintiff alleged that she was a social media influencer and sought damages for misplaced wages to the tune of $4 million, alleging that due to her burns she suffered “cancelled contracts for work as a social media influencer and advertising skilled.”  Id.  Throughout discovery Plaintiff produced all posts that she stated “both point out the incident or Plaintiff’s accidents, or that depict or focus on Plaintiff’s accidents in any manner.”  Id.  However she resisted manufacturing of different social media posts. 

The court docket agreed with Defendant that Plaintiff needed to do a full manufacturing of the Plaintiff’s Instagram accounts—not simply people who point out or depict her accidents.  This included not solely Plaintiff’s public account, however her non-public Instagram account as nicely.  The court docket agreed that these posts have been “extremely related” to each her declare for misplaced wages as a social media influencer and her declare for emotional accidents.  Id.

This might be a case of a plaintiff now regretting overinflating the attain of her social media affect, however the result’s proper.  It’s black-letter legislation that any piece of a plaintiff’s alleged injury calculation is the right topic of discovery, no matter what on-line kind it might take.