Defendant discovery costs in the Circle Of Success class-action are expected to top one million dollars.
To date individual defendants have collectively spent $128,980 responding to discovery requests.
Discovery sought from Herbalife distributor defendants Mary Holloway, Ryan Baker, Alcides Mejia Jr., Carol Rosenau, Alan Rodriguez, Disney di Martinez, Gabriel Sandoval, Jillian Addy, Paulina Riveros, Danielle Grace and Michael Katz includes;
- email accounts
- social media data (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Telegram)
- stored Google Drive data
- cell phone data
- WhatsApp communications
- laptop imaging
- hard copy documents
- stored Dropbox data
- stored Box Cloud data
- zoom recordings
- website information
- stored iCloud data
- desktop imaging
- PayPal account data
- Voxer communications
- data stored on thumb drives
- iPad imaging and
- cell phone data
Most of the costs associated with production are related to processing collected data.
E.g. hosting the data to be made available currently costs $10,560 a month. This amount is expected to ‘significantly increase as data is promoted to a “Review” stage’.
These figures were disclosed in a January 25th Status Report pertaining to discovery.
In sum, Defendants have incurred $128,980 to date in responding to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests in this action, excluding Quarles & Brady attorneys’ fees.
Defendants project that the cost of obtaining, processing, and overseeing the remaining document collections will be approximately $110,000.
Defendants further estimate that they will incur substantial additional costs relating to the contract attorney review of ESI, which is estimated to be in excess of $410,000.
Accounting for additional hosting fees and Quarles & Brady fees, Defendants estimate their total costs incurred in responding to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories and requests for production in this action will easily surpass $1 million.
Bear in mind these are individual defendants too. The case against Herbalife itself was split back in 2018.