Under the Federal Rules, discovery is limited to nonprivileged material that is both "relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case." According to the rules, when addressing the proportionality requirement courts should consider "the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit." In this article, Finnegan attorneys Dan Cooley and Brandon Andersen discuss the factors to consider when determining whether a given discovery request is proportional to the needs of the case including the importance of an issue, the adequacy of alternative discovery measures, and the privacy concerns involved.
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