§ 9-11-26.General provisions governing discovery

Parties may pursue discovery through oral or written depositions, interrogatories, production and inspection of documents, land, or things, physical and mental examinations, and requests for admission, and the frequency of using them is unrestricted unless the court limits it. The scope of what’s fair game is broad: any non-privileged matter relevant to the subject matter of the action, whether it bears on the requesting party’s own claim or defense or someone else’s, tested against whether it’s reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence rather than whether it would itself be admissible at trial.

Two categories get special treatment. Insurance agreements that might cover a judgment in the case are discoverable — their existence and contents — though disclosure alone doesn’t make that information admissible, and an application for insurance doesn’t count as part of the agreement. Litigation-financing agreements are discoverable too, as to their existence, terms, and conditions, but a nonparty funder is reachable only once the funding hits $25,000 or more, and while disclosure doesn’t make the financing agreement itself admissible, it doesn’t block other uses of that information as evidence of a claim or defense either.

Trial-preparation materials get real, though not absolute, protection. A party seeking documents or things another party (or its representative) prepared in anticipation of litigation has to show substantial need and an inability to get the substantial equivalent elsewhere without undue hardship, and even then a court has to shield an attorney’s mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, and legal theories. A party can always obtain its own prior statement without that showing, and a nonparty can request its own statement too. Expert discovery splits along a similar line: a testifying expert’s identity, subject matter, facts, and opinions can be reached through interrogatories at no extra cost, but obtaining that same information through a deposition or document production requires the requesting party to pay the expert a reasonable fee for the time spent responding, while a non-testifying, specially retained expert stays off-limits except through the physical-and-mental-examination procedure or on a showing of exceptional circumstances.

For good cause, including the high-ranking-officer factors spelled out in Code Section 9-11-26.1, a court can enter a protective order barring or limiting discovery in a range of ways — from blocking it outright to sealing a deposition or requiring simultaneous, sealed submissions. Absent a court order, discovery methods may be used in any sequence, and one party’s discovery doesn’t hold up another party’s. Finally, a party generally has no duty to update a complete response after the fact, except for a seasonable duty to keep witness-identity and expert-testimony information current, and a seasonable duty to correct a response later known to be wrong or that has become misleading — a duty that a court order, an agreement, or a new request can also impose.