Celgard v. Shenzhen Senior Technology Material Co. Ltd. Research Institute
Celgard, LLC v. Shenzhen Senior Technology Material Co. Ltd. (US) Research Institute
- Jon Tigar
- 4:19-cv-05784
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Celgard v. Shenzhen Senior, Judge Tigar overruled discovery objections and struck related filings, while disregarding one response as moot.
Celgard and the Defendants were affected by the court’s rulings on additional discovery, the request for expedited relief, and the proposed second deposition of Dr. John Zhang.
What happened
In Celgard, LLC v. Shenzhen Senior Technology Material Co. Ltd. (US) Research Institute, et al., the court reviewed objections to a Special Master’s discovery orders and several filings about expedited relief. The dispute involved additional discovery and whether Defendants could question Dr. John Zhang again.
Defendants argued that the Special Master improperly allowed discovery after the deadlines and wrongly denied their request to take another deposition of Dr. Zhang. Celgard argued that the additional discovery was proper because the court had changed the governing legal framework and that Defendants had not shown a valid need for another deposition.
Judge Tigar overruled Defendants’ objections to both Special Master orders, struck Celgard’s request for expedited relief and notice, and disregarded Defendants’ response as moot. The court also declined to consider Defendants’ request to prevent Celgard from questioning Dr. Zhang about documents produced after his deposition.
The detailed version
- Celgard v. Shenzhen Senior Technology Material Co. Ltd. Research Institute · No. 4:19-cv-05784
- Jon Tigar
- Aug. 4, 2023
Background
The court considered four filings: Defendants’ objections to the Special Master’s May 18, 2023 order; Celgard’s request for expedited relief and notice under Civil Local Rule 7-13; Celgard’s motion to strike Defendants’ response to that request; and Defendants’ objections to the Special Master’s July 5, 2023 order.
The first objection concerned the Special Master’s decision to allow Celgard to pursue additional fact discovery involving 46 discovery requests, including potentially late motions to compel. Defendants argued that the Special Master had exceeded his authority by effectively changing the fact-discovery cutoff and the deadline for discovery motions.
The court relied on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(e), which requires a party to timely supplement or correct a discovery response when it learns that the response is materially incomplete or incorrect. The court stated that this supplementation duty can extend beyond the discovery cutoff. It also concluded that the court had changed the governing law of the case by holding that information about all Defendants’ separator products and their relationships with suppliers and related entities, including entities abroad, was relevant to Celgard’s induced-infringement claim. The Special Master therefore properly required the parties to meet and confer about supplementing discovery responses that were incomplete or incorrect in light of that change.
Expedited-relief filing
Celgard’s Civil Local Rule 7-13 notice asked the court to issue an expedited ruling rejecting Defendants’ objections and to order Defendants to supplement their discovery responses by July 15, 2023. The court held that the notice improperly included substantive arguments and a request to compel discovery. It therefore struck the notice. The court also treated Defendants’ response to that notice as moot and disregarded it.
Second deposition of Dr. John Zhang
Defendants also objected to the Special Master’s denial of their request to take another deposition of Dr. John Zhang. They argued that the Special Master applied the wrong legal standard and clearly erred in finding that they had not identified sufficiently important information uniquely in Dr. Zhang’s possession. In the alternative, Defendants asked the court to bar Celgard from eliciting testimony from Dr. Zhang about documents produced after his first deposition.
Celgard argued that Defendants had not shown that Dr. Zhang possessed unique information unavailable from other witnesses or that the later-produced documents contained genuinely new, nonduplicative information. Celgard also argued that Defendants had not previously presented their request to bar testimony to the Special Master.
The court concluded that the Special Master properly denied the request for another deposition. Because Dr. Zhang had already been deposed, Defendants needed court permission, and the proposed deposition had to comply with the discovery limits in Rule 26. The court found that Defendants had not shown that another deposition would avoid unreasonable repetition or that the information could not be obtained from another witness. The court declined to consider the request to bar testimony because Defendants had not presented that request to the Special Master.
Disposition
The court ordered as follows:
- It overruled Defendants’ objections to the Special Master’s May 18, 2023 order.
- It struck Celgard’s request for expedited relief and Civil Local Rule 7-13 notice.
- It disregarded as moot Defendants’ response to Celgard’s request for expedited relief and notice.
- It overruled Defendants’ objections to the Special Master’s July 5, 2023 order.
Judge Jon S. Tigar signed the order on August 4, 2023.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.