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In re TIG Insurance Co.8/11/2005
This dispute involves discovery requests submitted in an insurance coverage case between Henry C. Beck Company (Beck) and TIG (formerly known as Transamerica Insurance Company). Beck is a construction company, and is a defendant in several personal injury suits in which it is alleged that Beck is liable for damages due to its exposing claimants to asbestos between 1960 and 1990. Beck alleges that the suits claiming asbestos-related injuries have been filed in Texas, and elsewhere. In this suit, Beck sued TIG and four other insurance carriers that allegedly provided general liability coverage to Beck between 1960 and 1990. Beck alleged TIG provided commercial liability coverage from November 1, 1969 to November 1, 1972. Through its suit, Beck sought damages for breach of contract, Insurance Code violations, and declaratory relief.
Beck served a request to produce on TIG pursuant to Tex. R. Civ. P. 192.3(b). Through its request, Beck requested documents from TIG for a twenty-six year period during which some of the asbestos claimants that sued Beck might have been exposed to asbestos. Beck also requested documents that reflected TIG's position pertaining to construing policies TIG had issued since TIG's inception in 1911. TIG timely filed objections to all of the requests, including objections to most of the requests on the basis that they were overly broad.
Relator TIG filed a petition for a writ of mandamus complaining of an order overruling TIG's objections to Beck's 113 requests to produce and the trial court's award of $10,000 in attorney's fees against TIG. At the hearing on objections, Judge Gary Sanderson overruled all of TIG's objections, and ordered production to all of the 113 requests as propounded, and without modification. Therefore, we apply the law to the requests as propounded by Beck, and review the rulings of the trial court on TIG's objections to determine whether the trial court followed and applied settled law regarding discovery.
On multiple occasions in the past sixteen years, the Texas Supreme Court has addressed issues concerning overly broad discovery. The principles of those cases that we apply to resolving this discovery dispute are:
(1) Requests to produce must specify the items to be produced or inspected with reasonable particularity. Tex. R. Civ. P. 196.1(b); Loftin v. Martin, 776 S.W.2d 145, 148 (Tex. 1989)(orig. proceeding);
(2) Discovery may not be used as a fishing expedition. K Mart Corp. v. Sanderson, 937 S.W.2d 429, 431 (Tex. 1996)(orig. proceeding); Dillard Dep't Stores, Inc. v. Hall, 909 S.W.2d 491, 492 (Tex. 1995)(orig. proceeding); Texaco, Inc. v. Sanderson, 898 S.W.2d 813, 814 (Tex. 1995)(orig. proceeding);
(3) Requests must be tailored to include only matters relevant to the case. In re American Optical Corp., 988 S.W.2d 711, 713 (Tex. 1998)(orig. proceeding);
(4) Discovery orders "requiring document production from an unreasonably long period or from distant and unrelated locales" are impermissibly overbroad and are subject to correction by mandamus. In re CSX Corp., 124 S.W.3d 149, 152 (Tex. 2003)(orig. proceeding);
(5) To discover insurance policies, the proponent of the discovery must show that the policy is applicable to a potential judgment. In re Dana Corp., 138 S.W.3d 298, 301 (Tex. 2004)(orig. proceeding); and
(6) To determine whether information beyond the policy is discoverable in a particular case, "courts must ascertain if the information is discoverable under Rule 192.3(a)'s general scope-of-discovery test." Id. at 303; see also Tex. R. Civ P. 192.3(a).
All but a few of the discovery requests propounded by Beck suf
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