In re Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. Securities Litigation
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:17-cv-01580
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In re Chicago Bridge & Iron Securities Litigation: Judge Schofield oversaw an order allowing two expert depositions with limits on the second.
The plaintiffs’ and defendants’ expert witnesses and the parties’ counsel were affected. Each side could depose the opposing expert after each report, but a second deposition could address only new material in the later report.
What happened
In re Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. Securities Litigation involved a dispute over how many times defendants could question plaintiffs’ expert during discovery. Defendants sought one deposition after the initial report and another after a rebuttal report; plaintiffs argued that each expert should be deposed only once.
The order allowed a second deposition after each report, and gave plaintiffs the same opportunity regarding defendants’ expert. The second deposition could address only new material in the later report and could not repeat the first deposition’s questions.
Judge Schofield’s court referred the dispute to Special Master Shira A. Scheindlin, who concluded that defendants had shown the added depositions’ benefits outweighed their cost and burden. The order was dated December 9, 2019, and filed December 16, 2019.
The detailed version
- In re Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. Securities Litigation · No. 1:17-cv-01580
- Lorna Schofield
- Dec. 16, 2019
Background
The court referred a discovery dispute about expert depositions to Special Master Shira A. Scheindlin. Defendants asked to depose plaintiffs’ expert twice: once after the initial expert report and again after receiving a rebuttal report. The purpose of the first deposition would be to allow defendants’ expert to review the transcript before preparing a response. The second deposition would address opinions newly presented in the rebuttal report. Plaintiffs opposed the request and asked that each side be limited to one deposition per expert.
Decision
The Special Master concluded that defendants could depose plaintiffs’ expert after each report. Plaintiffs received the same opportunity to depose defendants’ expert twice if they wished. The second deposition could not repeat questions from the first deposition and was limited to new material in the second report.
The order recognized that the usual rule is that each witness may be deposed once unless the court permits another deposition. The party seeking a second deposition bears the burden of showing that its benefits outweigh the burden and expense. The Special Master found that defendants met that burden because the case was complex, expert testimony would address difficult issues, and the additional deposition costs were not excessive in the context of the discovery already conducted. The stated reasons for allowing the depositions were efficiency and fairness before trial.
Effect of the Order
The order resolved the expert-deposition dispute by permitting a second deposition after each expert report, subject to the limitation that the later deposition cover only new material. It did not decide the underlying securities claims. Judge Lorna Schofield’s court referred the issue to the Special Master for resolution. The order is dated December 9, 2019, and was filed December 16, 2019.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.