PHILADELPHIA – Lawyers should be handling discovery requests, not daughters-in-law, QVC argues as it fights a breach of contract lawsuit brought by actress and business mogul Suzanne Somers.
QVC says it has been waiting months for information from Somers and SLC Sweet, Inc. In a motion filed July 10, it asked a Philadelphia federal judge to order the plaintiffs to get on with it.
“(T)here remain numerous fundamental questions that Plaintiffs have not answered – and what information Plaintiffs’ counsel has disclosed is disturbing,” QVC’s lawyers wrote.
“Plaintiffs revealed that Suzanne Somers’ daughter-in-law (an SLC employee) is ‘spearheading’ the collection, review and selection of relevant documents for production (and is being assisted by other, unidentified SLC employees).”
QVC asks the court to require Somers’ lawyers - and not SLC employees) to collect and review the data it is seeking during discovery, among other things.
“Federal courts and commentators have consistently warned for decades about the dangers of having employees of a party responsible for collecting, reviewing and making relevance determinations for discovery document productions,” the motion says.
“This is because using an employee-driven data collection, review and production process raises an unacceptable likelihood that relevant documents will not be produced, and that discovery misconduct may take place.”
Somers is alleging QVC lured her into a deal as an attempt to remove her from the dietary supplement business and market its own supplement brands.
The plaintiffs claim they were steered away from selling their products through the home shopping retailer Evine and asked to enter into a form purchase order agreement with QVC - all while a merger between QVC and HSN appeared to already be in the works. The suit states HSN already had a dietary supplement brand partner, Andrew Lessman.
"(W)hen QVC merged with HSN, Mr. Lessman insisted that his exclusive contract as the only supplement vendor at HSN be extended to QVC, thereby forcing QVC to eliminate Ms. Somers as a vendor," the suit states. "The merger of HSN with QVC was done in order to enable QVC to gain extensive competitive advantages in the marketplace."
The plaintiffs allege they were "lured" into the agreement by QVC "in order to drive or 'starve' plaintiffs out of business by locking plaintiffs into the agreement and purposefully limiting its orders and/or ordering perishable products with the intent to cause plaintiffs harm by delaying and rejecting those products without a legitimate basis and at a time when such products became expired."
The plaintiffs seek more than $150,000 in compensatory damages as well as threefold damages and litigation costs.