ReCor Medical, Inc. v. Medtronic Ireland Manufacturing Unlimited Co.
- Thomas Hixson
- 3:22-cv-03072
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In ReCor Medical v. Medtronic Ireland, Judge Hixson ruled interrogatories 14, 15, and 19 count as four under the parties’ 25-interrogatory limit.
ReCor Medical, Inc. and Medtronic Ireland Manufacturing Unlimited Co. and the other defendants are affected by the court’s calculation of the interrogatories under the parties’ agreed 25-interrogatory limit.
What happened
ReCor Medical, Inc. v. Medtronic Ireland Manufacturing Unlimited Co. concerns a dispute over how many interrogatories ReCor had used under the parties’ agreed 25-interrogatory limit.
ReCor served interrogatories 14 through 21 in its third set. Medtronic objected to interrogatories 14, 15, and 19 as compound and refused to answer interrogatories 20 and 21, claiming ReCor had exceeded the limit. The parties asked the court to resolve how the interrogatories should be counted.
Judge Thomas S. Hixson ruled that interrogatories 14, 15, and 19 collectively count as four interrogatories. He treated interrogatory 14 as two because it asked about both design-and-development work and related costs, while treating interrogatories 15 and 19 as one each.
The detailed version
- ReCor Medical, Inc. v. Medtronic Ireland Manufacturing Unlimited Co. · No. 3:22-cv-03072
- Thomas Hixson
- Feb. 7, 2025
Background
On December 3, 2024, ReCor served its third set of interrogatories, numbered 8 through 21, on Medtronic. Medtronic objected to interrogatories 14, 15, and 19 as compound. It also refused to answer interrogatories 20 and 21, claiming that ReCor had exceeded the parties’ agreed maximum of 25 interrogatories. The parties submitted a joint discovery letter brief about how the interrogatories should be counted.
Legal standard
The court followed the “related question” approach for counting interrogatories under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33. Under that approach, subparts that are logically or factually contained within and necessarily related to the main question count as one interrogatory. Subparts addressing different main subjects count separately.
Court’s analysis
The court held that interrogatory 14 counted as two interrogatories. It asked for both a description of the work involved in designing and developing renal neuromodulation devices and an itemization of the associated costs. The court concluded that these were different main subjects because a description of the work could be provided without itemizing costs, and the documents supporting the two types of information would likely be different.
The court held that interrogatory 15 counted as one interrogatory. Although it requested information about costs, revenues, sales data, and whether the products related to asserted patents, the court found that all of these requests concerned one main subject: calculating patent-infringement damages.
The court also held that interrogatory 19 counted as one interrogatory. Its subparts all concerned Medtronic’s commercial assessment of the market or markets for the Symplicity System.
Ruling
Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered that interrogatories 14, 15, and 19 collectively count as four interrogatories. The order does not state whether Medtronic was separately ordered to answer interrogatories 20 and 21.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.