Cooperation

Generally speaking, the presumption is that third parties will bear at least some of the costs of complying with proper subpoenas. That said, Courts often expect that a requesting party will negotiate in good faith the costs of compliance and, if those costs are significant, the requesting party would agree to cover at least some of the costs or limit its requests in light of the requirement of FRCP 45(d)(2)(B)(ii). As demonstrated by a recent case, though FRCP 45 provides two avenues for a third party to recover its costs for responding to a subpoena in federal litigation, such awards are the exception to the rule.

Now that almost two years have passed since the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure became law, we have the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of our current strategies and whether we are taking full advantage of the new rules related to discovery.