Judge Overrules Ramaswamy’s Objections to Allowing Plaintiff Early Discovery
U.S. District Judge Michael Watson for Southern Ohio in Columbus overruled the objections of defendant Vivek Ramaswamy to a magistrate judge’s order granting plaintiff Thomas Grant’s motion for limited expedited discovery in his Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action against…
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the former Republican presidential candidate (see 2404050013), said Watson’s signed opinion and order Friday (docket 2:24-cv-00281). Grant sought the discovery to preserve relevant records of calls that Ramaswamy’s campaign made to him and his putative class members to solicit their participation in his telephonic town halls. Ramaswamy had asked the court to set aside the order as “clearly erroneous and contrary to law.” But the magistrate judge rightly found there was good cause for granting the discovery motion, said the opinion and order. Though this isn’t a case involving patent infringement or unfair competition, “all the other factors” favor plaintiff Grant, it said. He persuasively argues that there’s a risk that evidence will be lost, it said. Grant’s counsel "represents" that in other TCPA cases, some of the companies that make calls on behalf of others have policies to destroy call logs within a few months, it said. "Of course, that does not prove the evidence in this case will be lost," but Grant "has presented a sufficient basis for concluding that there is a risk that the evidence will be lost," it said. That's "enough for this factor to favor allowing early discovery," it said. Ramaswamy also would suffer “little prejudice” from discovery, it said. The only thing he has to do is give Grant the name of the dialer that the campaign used, it said. The scope of the requested discovery is narrow, it said. Indeed, the plaintiff asks only for the identity of the dialer and for permission to subpoena call logs from the dialer. The request is limited to only what he needs to preserve the call transmission logs, and that factor also “supports allowing early discovery,” it said. On Ramaswamy’s argument that the magistrate judge erred by ruling on a discovery dispute before resolving his jurisdictional challenge, that argument fails because the court has subject-matter jurisdiction over the case, said the opinion and order. On the former candidate's objections to the magistrate judge allowing Grant to serve a third party with a subpoena, Ramaswamy “lacks standing to raise this objection,” it said. He offers no argument that he has “any claim of privilege to the information sought by the subpoena,” it said.