I wanted to outline the issue of legal and sworn depositions by Plaintiffs. To be clear, Plaintiffs will be subject for these depositions and will also be required to provide written discovery including answering written questions as well as an inspection of their personal, business, banking, investment, and financial records. Failure to do so will result in their cases being dismissed. It is absolutely false and irrational that Plaintiffs believe that they are not required to respond to any written or oral discovery obligations given that they filed this lawsuit in the United States.
We believe the Court will compel the depositions in the United States because it will be logistically difficult (and nearly impossible) to schedule 13 depositions of each individual plaintiff in consecutive or near consecutive blocks of time at the U.S. consular offices in Japan. And because taking depositions in Japan can only occur on U.S. consular grounds, this makes it nearly impossible to take depositions of Plaintiffs on a timely and economic basis.
The factors that weigh in favor of forcing Plaintiffs to travel to the United States for depositions include: (1) both Plaintiffs’ and Entity Defendants’ counsel are located here in California; (2)Plaintiffs chose this forum; (3) the difficulty in length and logistics in securing 13 consecutive or near consecutive deposition days at the U.S. consular offices in Japan; and (4) the possibility of significant discovery disputes during the depositions (given the misinformation regarding their discovery obligations under which Plaintiffs seem to be operating) and the time difference between Los Angeles and Japan in order to resolve these discovery disputes by the Court.
Please give some thought about what information and written documents to request from Plaintiffs. At a minimum, my list includes the following (which covers time period from 2000 to the present):
1. All banking and financial records 2. All investment records 3. All income (salary, wage, tips, and other compensation) records 4. All travel records 5. All education and vocation school records, certificates, and diplomas 6. All income tax records 7. All telephone record related to Interush 8. All correspondence related to Interush 9. All agreements with Interush 10. All cancelled checks or evidence of payment to Interush 11. Copies of receipt of any funds from Interush (whether commission or other payments) 12. A list of all persons with whom each Plaintiff discussed Interush 13. A list of all investments made with Interush or any other company 14. All emails and hard drives from each Plaintiff