PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) – QVC recently took a squabble with Suzanne Somers to a federal judge who authored a short, sharp rebuke a few days later.
On Oct. 26, Philadelphia federal judge Chad Kenney denied a motion to compel filed by the company as it fights the lawsuit of Somers, who alleges QVC lured her into a deal as an attempt to remove her from the dietary supplement business and market its own supplement brands.
QVC complained on Oct. 23 that Somers and co-plaintiff SLC Sweet weren’t complying with discovery orders. It said Somers put family members involved in the business in charge of document review and production and reviewing emails instead of lawyers.
QVC claimed it was reluctant to bring its gripe to Judge Kenney but felt the need to.
“Plaintiffs’ discovery collection and production strategy – brazenly continued after repeated warnings from and discussions with QVC counsel – falls far short of the requirement the rules impose on Plaintiffs,” QVC’s lawyers wrote.
“QVC requests that the court compel Plaintiffs to have their counsel redo the collection and review of Plaintiffs’ potentially relevant electronic data and to forensically image, collect and review the data of individual computers and mobile devices for Plaintiffs’ five custodians.”
But the judge said QVC’s motion did not relate to anything QVC has or has not received from the plaintiffs.
“Defendant QVC’s motion to compel does not specify any facts, allegations or defenses regarding liability and damages missing from Plaintiffs’ production, if any production at all (one cannot tell from the face of the motion), to this date,” Kenney wrote.
“This is not a game of comparisons in terms of size of production or who is in charge of the production in a family-run business, at least on this record.”
If QVC wants to complain documents are missing, it will need to be more specific in the future, Kenney wrote.
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.