Wolf v. Apfel

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the plaintiff could serve a document request pursuant to Rule 34 consistent with the SCA, but noting that the defendant may still raise privilege or relevancy objections
• ruling that the SCA does not preclude civil discovery of a party’s electronically stored communications which remain within the party’s control even if they are maintained by a non-party service provider
• holding that although the SCA prohibited a phone company’s disclosure pursuant to a civil discovery subpoena, the plaintiff could obtain the same information by serving a request for production of documents on the defendant pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34
• “The Sixth Circuit and other courts have held that documents are deemed to be within the ‘control’ of a party if it ‘has the legal right to obtain the documents on demand.’”
• in light of the SCA, the court did not enforce discovery subpoena directed to electronic service provider, but ordered the plaintiff to file a Rule 34 document request propounded to an opposing party
• “[A]s noted by the ’ courts and commentators alike, § 2702 lacks any language that explicitly authorizes a service provider to divulge the contents of a communication pursuant to a- subpoena or court order.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).