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You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.By Evan Slavitt
Courts in the United States permit very broad discovery. Although there has been some movement toward restricting that discovery — especially for electronic discovery — the rules generally require litigants to produce large amounts of discovery. Further, because the rules don’t focus on corporate formalities, but instead on “control,” parents are generally required to produce documents held by all subsidiaries even if located outside the United States. This can result in direct conflict with data privacy laws outside the United States, as well as blocking statutes (laws specifically aimed at US discovery).
Corporate litigation counsel must be sensitive to such issues and must make early efforts to acquaint US outside counsel to the problems that will be faced. It has been my experience that many — if not most — US litigation counsel are not very familiar with these problems. Most of the time, they do not arise in their practices. That means that in-house counsel must be proactive. If these issues are not raised early with the court, they may be viewed as impediments or dilatory practices which put the company in a bad light.
Read the complete article at:Document Discovery and Data Privacy Laws
