The plaintiff, Chrimar Systems Inc. and Chrimar (“Chrimar”) filed a motion to compel an additional deposition of Defendant D-Link Systems, Inc.’s (“D-Link”) corporate representative, William C. Brown. Chrimar previously took the deposition of D-Link’s corporate representative, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6).
After the deposition concluded, Mr. Brown supplied an errata sheet, correcting numerous portions of his deposition testimony pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(e). In its motion, Chrimar contends that over 60 answers were materially altered and several answers were changed from “yes” to “no.” As a result, Chrimar moved the district court to compel “Mr. Brown for a second deposition in Dallas, Texas regarding the changes represented in his errata sheet.”
D-Link opposed the motion by asserting that the “corrections were all based on an honest mistake or in an effort to make the record more clear.” The district court noted that “[w]hile it appears that D-Link agrees to make Mr. Brown available for deposition, D-Link disagrees regarding the place and length of the deposition.”
After reviewing the changes made by Mr. Brown, including changing “yes” to “no,” the district court agreed with Chrimar. “Here, Mr. Brown made over 10 pages of corrections to his deposition testimony. Indeed, several of these changes changed answers of ‘yes’ to ‘no’ or ‘no’ to ‘yes.'”
The district court also did not agree with the explanations given by the witness for the changes. “While D-Link contends these edits were to fix an honest mistake, the only reasons given by Mr. Brown for the corrections were: (1) to clarify the record; or (2) to conform to the facts. This reasoning provides little explanation as to why these answers were changed and why several answers were materially altered after the deposition.”
As a result, the district court determined that a further deposition was warranted. “Accordingly, the Court finds that a further deposition is not only warranted, but necessary to clarify the record. The Court ORDERS that Mr. Brown appear for deposition in Dallas, Texas–at the location of Chrimar’s choosing–to be deposed for a total of 3 hours by no later than December 2, 2016.”
Chrimar Systems, Inc. v. Adtran, Inc., Case No. 6:15-CV-00618-JRG (E.D. Tex. Nov. 14, 2016)
The authors of www.PatentLawyerBlog.com are patent trial lawyers at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP. For more information about this case, contact Stan Gibson at 310.201.3548 or SGibson@jmbm.com.