CDCA denies motion to compel production of settlement agreements

On May 29, 2014, Magistrate Judge Mumm of the Central District of California issued a discovery order in In re Katz Interactive Call Processing Litigation, Case No. 07-ML-1816 RGK (FFMx), addressing defendant Echostar’s motion to compel production of settlement agreements by plaintiff.  The issue is a narrow one, but points out the importance of crafting damages-related discovery requests sufficiently broad to capture all kinds of agreements.  The court reviewed the document requests at issue and concluded they were intended to cover license agreements.  The court reasoned that the requests only addressed settlement agreements to the extent they included a license.  The settlement agreements at issue were related to expired patents, and the court concluded they “are not sufficiently related to license agreements to be fairly within the contemplation of the discovery requests.”  Slip op. at 2. The court thus denied Echostar’s motion.