Lights, action, discovery dispute: A Texas tale

A TV host resigned because her employer didn’t respond when she complained about her cohost’s behavior. After her cohost was fired a few months later, she sued. During the pretrial fact-finding stage (discovery), the parties disagreed over what information they were required to exchange. Let’s take a look.

Combustible

Sydney Watson was the cohost of a TV show for Blaze Media, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She and her cohost, Elijah Schaffer, clashed. According to Watson, he was “aggressive” and “overly misogynistic” toward her and demonstrated “anti-Jewish” bias and made “antisemitic” comments.

Watson complained to management, which allegedly was unresponsive, and she ultimately resigned because of the working conditions. Schaffer was fired a few months later, and Watson then filed a lawsuit alleging sex and religious discrimination. This brings us to the pretrial fact-finding dispute.

Fight over answering written questions

In a lawsuit, each side can send written questions to the opposite party (i.e., “interrogatories,” from the root word “interrogate”). Here, Watson’s lawyers wanted to know, among other items, the following information: