United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND Case No. 19-cv-01391-CRB (AGT)

EXCHANGE COMMISSION,

Plaintiff, DISCOVERY ORDER v. Re: Dkt. Nos. 90, 101–

VOLKSWAGEN

AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT, et al., Defendants.

With one exception that isn’t relevant here, the SEC has asked VW to “[i]dentify each VW officer, director, or employee . . . whom the VW Defendants believe knew, prior to May 22, 2015, about VW’s use of a Defeat Device,” and to “state in meaningful detail the basis for the VW Defendants’ belief as to each person so identified.” Dkt. 90-3 at 4–5. VW lodged a work-product objection to this interrogatory, which the Court now sustains. To understand VW’s objection, and why it has merit, it may be helpful to start from first principles. When one side serves an interrogatory on the other, the responding party’s attorneys must gather information to respond. Sometimes the task is simple. For example, if an interrogatory asks a corporate defendant to state its profits from a given year, the defendant’s lawyers can ask the company’s CFO for the answer and write it down. The attorneys are…