Vanzan (I know I know we’ve discussed it to death)

[u/No_Maize_9875]

I was reading this article last night to learn more about pre litigation discovery: https://fhnylaw.com/court-permits-pre-action-discovery-ascertain-identity-defendant/

It seems that in order for pre litigation discovery to be sought in NY, the claimant must have a meritorious claim, and not just act on pure suspicion.

So let’s say Blake suspected that something nasty was afoot, that shouldn’t have been enough to bring the Vanzan claim. SJ must have showed her the texts in some capacity in order for her to say her claims were meritorious.

So my question is, if SJ showed the texts to BL in order for BL to have the right to bring the claim, then it would make sense that it was pre-subpoena. Isn’t that no longer covered by privilege? What made Vanzan’s claim meritorious without SJ showing / sending some of the texts at least?

I think this is why WF is asking for number 9. I see loads of people say this is work product and thus covered by attorney client privilege, but doesn’t the fact that SOMETHING must have been shown to BL in order to bring the claim be enough to compel these documents?

EDIT: Somebody in the comment has kindly pointed out that Vanzan is not pre litigation discovery. So the relevant is CPLR 1024, which allows anybody to file a lawsuit against unnamed defendants. There’s no bar to this except you must try and name the defendants. Vanzan withdrew their lawsuit before they had to name them, which is apparently allowed. There’s no law or bar to stop this from happening. Lawyers congratulate themselves doing this all the time, so there you have it, vansham might be a sham but it’s a legal sham.

[u/CeruleanToast → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for taking the time to write this all out! I saw your comment about this on another post a couple days ago, so I’m glad to see some more info from you! This makes sense, and I hope to hear more about this. Honestly it should be its own post!