Texas Supreme Court yanks ‘fishing expedition’ pole

On December 9, 2022, the Texas Supreme Court gave an early holiday gift to Texas employers when it resolved a pretrial, fact-finding issue. As the court put it, “Quite unsurprisingly, discovery (i.e., pretrial exchange of evidence) requests for cell-phone data have become common place in recent years.” Well, that’s an understatement. To see how the court is directing lower courts to manage these requests, read on.

Factory explosion!

Kuraray America operates a plant in Pasadena, near Houston. The plant deals with combustible chemicals, and its activities are managed by employees that operate a control board.

On May 19, 2018, there was an explosion at the plant releasing fumes and injuring area residents. A negligence lawsuit followed. The essence of a negligence claim is that the company owed a duty to others not to harm them, that it breached that duty through its actions, and that harm resulted from the breach.

Court rejects ‘ready, fire, aim!’ approach

In discovery, the injured parties (the plaintiffs) asked the company to turn over the cell phone data of the employees responsible for operating the control panel. They wanted it for substantial periods of time both pre-explosion and post-explosion. By contrast, the company offered to provide the data for the day of the explosion.

The trial court sided with the plaintiffs, so the company went to the Texas Supreme Court. In a brief opinion, the court reversed the trial court and set down the law.