HotSpot Therapeutics, Inc. v. Nurix Therapeutics, Inc.

Background

Nurix moved to compel HotSpot to respond to certain requests for production and to prepare a witness or witnesses for specified topics in a deposition under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). The court held a hearing on January 8, 2024.

For requests for production, the court said that merely listing requests in a chart, without explaining why the requested relief should be granted, was not enough to support a motion to compel. The court therefore did not treat a bare listing as a satisfactory argument for compelling production.

Document Requests

The court granted Nurix’s motion to compel as to the requests in Categories 1, 2, and 6: RFPs 7, 34, 53, 12, 40, and 13. The court said the broad financial discovery was relevant and proportional to Nurix’s likely damages theories. It did not decide the validity of those damages theories; the court said that, if the theories satisfy the standards under Daubert, a jury will decide whether they have merit.

The court also granted the motion as to Category 3, RFPs 36 and 57. Although HotSpot argued that Nurix’s description of those requests was not exact and that HotSpot might have no responsive documents, the court enforced the requests as written. The order did not require HotSpot to produce documents it does not have.

For Category 4, RFPs 39, 48, and 59, the court granted the motion to compel production of responsive non-custodial documents.

For Category 5, the court granted the motion as to RFPs 36 and 41 because they were relevant and proportional to Nurix’s likely damages theories. It denied the motion as to RFP 6 because that request was not included with the joint discovery letter brief, so the court did not know what it asked for.

Rule 30(b)(6) Topics

The court granted Nurix’s motion to compel as to deposition topics 53–58 and 60. The court expected the witness or witnesses to be adequately prepared, while recognizing that even a well-prepared witness could not necessarily recall every revenue, cost, profit, or loss figure for every year and quarter since HotSpot was founded. The court expected a prepared witness to authenticate financial documents, explain them, and have a high-level understanding of the topics independent of the documents. The court also said Nurix could ask about financial information attributable to HotSpot’s DEL program during fact discovery, even if HotSpot might also have an expert on that subject.

The court denied Nurix’s motion to compel as to topics 63 and 65. It characterized those as contention topics that improperly sought legal conclusions from a fact witness, explaining that a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition is not an appropriate way to obtain discovery into legal contentions.

Disposition

The court ordered that Nurix’s motion to compel was granted in part and denied in part as described above. The court noted that the parties might have an evidentiary dispute about whether a particular HotSpot collaboration fell within the scope of certain requests for production. If that occurred, the court directed the parties to file a joint discovery letter brief with relevant evidence.