“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”[1]

It is the dawn of a new era in Nevada state civil court discovery. The Nevada Supreme Court has adopted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure-style proportionality standard for determining the appropriate scope of discovery.  Gone are the days of discussions over whether discovery is “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.”  But is the proportionality standard really new?  Or is it just in vogue again?  This article discusses cases decided in the Nevada U.S. District Court and elsewhere that should inform how practitioners implement Rule 26 of the Nevada Rules of Civil Procedure.  They read as a cautionary tale.

The 2019 amended Rule 26 says:

(b)     Discovery Scope and Limits.

(1)   Scope. Unless otherwise limited by order of the court in accordance with these rules, the scope of discovery is as follows: Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claims or defenses and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.[2]

Read More “What Can Nevada State Court Attorneys Learn About Proportionality From Federal Court Decisions?” »