process litigation discovery
Discovery and Efficiency of Process
<p>Does discovery have to proceed step-wise, or is it possible (or even routine) to combine the discovery process whenever possible?  Here's a hypothetical example of what I mean:</p>

<p>I am suing an employer for discriminatory hiring practices against black candidates.  Let us assume there is no question of law, but merely questions of facts.  I might pursue the following discovery strategy:</p>

<ol>
<li><strong>Request for admission</strong>: Do you discriminate against black candidates
in your hiring processes?  <em>If not, then:</em></li>
<li><strong>Interrogatory</strong>: How many black applicants have you had for openings in the last year, and to how many of those did you extend offers of employment?  <em>If the answer is that you don't know, then:</em></li>
<li><strong>Request for Production</strong>: Produce all job applications you collected in the last year, and I'll figure it out.</li>
</ol>

<p>The "step-wise* approach involves filing/serving each one of these on the opposing party, waiting for their response, and then (depending on the response) serving the next.  Obviously in more complicated cases this could result in <em>a lot</em> of back and forth.</p>

<p>The "efficient" approach would be to serve all three as a single request, essentially as I wrote them here.  Is this allowed?  Common?  Ill-advised?</p>

<p>It depends completely on the situation. How much money is involved, how much time do the attorneys want to burn, etc.</p>

<p>In general, you should make all your requests up front, especially if it involves documents. Usually there are a time deadlines, so your discovery schedule will be constrained by those dates.</p>

<p>If you do things that could be construed as badgering the defendant or deliberately wasting their time, the judge could get annoyed.</p>

<p>The Federal Rules deal with this. Many federal rules are adopted by state courts so it's worth double-checking the local rule.</p>

<p><strong><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_26" rel="nofollow">FRCP 26(d)(3)</a> as amended to Dec 1, 2015</strong></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Sequence. Unless the parties stipulate or the court orders
  otherwise for the parties’ and witnesses’ convenience and in the
  interests of justice:</p>
  
  <p>(A) <strong>methods of discovery may be used in any sequence</strong>; and</p>
  
  <p>(B) discovery by one party does not require any other party to delay
  its discovery.</p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>1970 note</strong>:<br>
Subdivision (d)—Sequence and Priority. This new provision is concerned with the sequence in which parties may proceed with discovery and with related problems of timing. The principal effects of the new provision are first, to eliminate any fixed priority in the sequence of discovery, and second, to make clear and explicit the court's power to establish priority by an order issued in a particular case.</p>

<p>In practice, you serve all three of those requests at once: RFA (Request for admissions), IROG's (interrogatories), and RFP's (request for the production of documents) all get served together. If you decide, from a strategic perspective to serve them individually, then you need to do it in order. It is your right to do it that way, so as to craft questions for the next set based on answers from the first; however, I've never seen this done. Typically at this point in litigation, you are dealing with  a lawyer. In that case the lawyer will except service and you can forgo all the formal service guidelines. If the litigant is <em>Pro Se</em> you need to actually serve them. But still, as a grouping with a cover letter that sets out what is being served. The next step in discovery is the deposition, where you ask any questions that are not answered by the written discovery, or to try to trip them up with their own answers, which they've signed, but most likely didn't prepare and may not even know what they say. I have won many a case by getting a litigant to admit that they don't even know what their defense is as written in their signed and notarized interrogatory answers!</p>
