[author: Eric Troutman]
In Mable v. Duke Energy, 2025 WL 3535057 (N.D. Fl. Nov. 18, 2025) the court overrule most of Duke’s objections and compelled a massive production consisting of for the period from September 17, 2020 through October 31, 2025, (over five years!) the following documents:
(a) Records showing all prerecorded calls placed by the defendant;
(b) The defendant’s “do not use” record—the record described in the briefing as including roughly 13,000 telephone numbers;
(c) The Swamp Fox data set;
(d) The SAP data set of outgoing calls.
Lots and lots.
Bad!
BUT the court also required PLAINTIFF to pay for the production:
The plaintiff must pay the cost of the production, including the cost of employee time and of systems usage as would be calculated by a cost accountant, as well as expert or contractor fees and expenses, but limited to cost reasonably incurred for this work, and not including attorney’s fees.
Good!
This ruling makes total sense as the US Supreme Court has held a PLAINTIFF must pay for the cost of notice to the class and this sort of class discovery is designed to identify those class members. Further, it makes no sense for a defendant to bear the cost of expensive discovery in a suit whose merits have not been determined.
Would like to see more cases like this– although actually I would like to see more cases where defendants win these fights and Plaintiff is denied these data sets (which they don’t actually need anyway.)
Chat soon.
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