Page:Touhy v. Walgreen Company.pdf/9

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

1049, 1053 (10th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation omitted). Generally, a district court "exceed[s] the bounds of permissible choice," only when its "decision is either based on a clearly erroneous finding of fact or an erroneous conclusion of law or manifests a clear error of judgment." Id. at 1053-54 (internal quotation omitted). In the discovery context, the range of permissible choices available to the district court is notably broad. This is so because discovery decisions necessarily involve an assessment of the anticipated burdens and benefits of particular discovery requests in discrete factual settings, while at the same time also requiring the trial judge to take account of the amount in controversy, the parties' resources, the importance of the issues at stake in the action, and the ability of the proposed discovery to shed light on those issues, among many other things. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C); see also, e.g., Cleveland v. Piper Aircraft Corp., 985 F.2d 1438, 1449-50 (10th Cir. 1993); King v. PA Consulting Group, Inc., 485 F.3d 577, 591 (10th Cir. 2007). Because few discovery matters are case dispositive and because there is more than one way to skin the discovery cat – getting at needed information through so many different modes, whether document requests, interrogatories, depositions, third party subpoenas, or requests for admission, to name but a few – by the time discovery disputes arrive in our court, "it is difficult at that stage to show that the party has been prejudiced by" any particular discovery order. Wright & Miller, 8 Federal Practice and

-9-