Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- David Doty
- 0:18-cv-00768
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 2
Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe: Judge Doty denied Strike 3’s appeal, leaving in place the denial of its request to serve a subpoena before the Rule 26(f) conference.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC’s appeal was denied, and the magistrate judge’s denial of its request to serve a third-party subpoena before the Rule 26(f) conference remained in effect. The opinion also identifies the defendant as John Doe.
What happened
In Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe, Strike 3 appealed an order denying its request to serve a third-party subpoena before the parties’ required pretrial conference. The subpoena request concerned a defendant identified in the caption as John Doe and assigned to an Internet Protocol address.
The court reviewed the magistrate judge’s order under a highly deferential standard. It would reverse only if the order was clearly wrong or contrary to law, and it concluded that the magistrate judge properly decided Strike 3 was not entitled to serve the subpoena at that early stage.
Judge Doty denied Strike 3’s appeal. The magistrate judge’s denial of the request therefore remained in effect.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 0:18-cv-00768
- David Doty
- July 30, 2018
Background
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC appealed Magistrate Judge Franklin L. Noel’s April 24, 2018, order. That order denied Strike 3’s ex parte motion for permission to serve a third-party subpoena before the parties held the conference required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(f). The defendant is identified in the caption as John Doe, a subscriber assigned Internet Protocol address 107.4.246.135.
Standard of Review
The court treated the subpoena request as a nondispositive matter. It applied an “extremely deferential” standard of review and explained that it could reverse the magistrate judge’s order only if the order was clearly erroneous or contrary to law. A finding is clearly erroneous when the reviewing court, after considering the evidence, is firmly convinced that a mistake was made. A decision is contrary to law when it fails to apply, or misapplies, relevant statutes, case law, or procedural rules.
Ruling
The court rejected Strike 3’s argument that the underlying motion was dispositive, stating that a request to serve a subpoena is inherently nondispositive. The court concluded that Magistrate Judge Noel properly exercised discretion in deciding that Strike 3 was not entitled to serve the third-party subpoena prematurely.
The court ordered that Strike 3’s appeal, docket entry 15, was denied.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.