Texas AG Paxton Wants To Take Over 20 Depositions In Razor Cases -- He's Only Allowed... 10; He's Taken Four Already.

The lunacy rolls onward, with Texas AG Paxton openly ignoring federal rules of civil procedure.

Y A W N.

Here on nearly the eve of a trial, he wants at least twenty, and perhaps unlimited depositions -- in a civil matter. A waterways case. He should lose -- but this is. . . West Texas. So we shall see:

. . .Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(a)(2)(A)(i) provides that, absent a stipulation, no party may take more than ten depositions without leave of court. Texas has already taken four depositions, leaving them with six. In the hours before the June 17, 2024 deadline to do so, Texas served on the United States fifteen non-expert deposition notices and a second set of requests for production of documents. This included four 30(b)(6) depositions of federal agencies and another 43 requests for production of documents, bringing the number of depositions Texas plans to take to 19 (not including any depositions of the United States’ rebuttal experts) and the number of document requests to 62.

At no point in the three months since the entry of the scheduling order did Texas seek leave of court or the United States’ agreement before serving these excess deposition notices. Nor did the parties agree to any depositions beyond the Federal Rules’ presumptive limit of 10. What’s more, at no point since first serving discovery requests in January 2024 until the June 17, 2024 deadline did Texas notice any non-expert depositions, thus underscoring the gamesmanship and lack of necessity of these depositions. . . .

The Court has already told the parties that “[t]here’s no need for any extensive discovery here,” ECF 69 at 7:9 (Transcript of January 19, 2024 Status Conference), because it will be an expert-heavy case in which the issues “have been known for several years [and are] not new,” ECF 95:1-3 (Transcript of February 22, 2024 Status Conference). . . .

Damn. It is clear that AG Paxton simply wants to stall / run out the trial clock -- until after November 2024 -- believing (foolishly) there will be a Tangerine again -- at 1600 Penn. (and that said Tangerine will order the case dropped). What a putz that Ken Paxton is. Out.

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