Discovery Beyond the Claim Rejected by Texas Supreme Court
Thank you to the Supreme Court of Texas for issuing a June 15, 2007 decision rejecting discovery concerning other claims, In re Allstate County Mutual Insurance Company. Discovery concerning unrelated claims has become policyholders' "STP," standard torture procedure. Here, a $13,500 dispute, the trial court had enforced discovery requests beyond the claim presented, including a request for the "transcripts of all testimony ever given by any Allstate agent on the topic of insurance." The Texas Supreme Court didn't tolerate it: "Overbroad requests for irrelevant information are improper whether they are burdensome or not.... 'Reasonable' discovery necessarily requires some sense of proportion." Although this decision concerned discovery under Texas procedure, the Texas Supreme Court's guiding principles may well be cited in other jurisdictions.
