Proposed revisions to Louisiana discovery procedure

If enacted, House Bill 203 will revise several articles of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure governing discovery. Some of the changes would be the following:

"Except with leave of court, when an exception is filed by a defendant prior to answer, the scope of discovery directed to or by that defendant prior to answer is limited to issues raised by the pending exception." New C.C.P. Art. 1422 C.

Article 1424 would be amended to extend the work-product privilege to electronically stored information.

A party claiming a privilege on documents sought in discovery would be required to produce a privilege log similar to that currently required by the Federal Rules.

Inadvertent disclosure of privileged information will not be an automatic waiver of the privilege, as long as the disclosing party took reasonably prompt measures to notify the receiving party of the inadvertence of the disclosure and the privilege asserted.

Drafts of an expert witness's report would generally not be discoverable.

The option to produce records to respond to an interrogatory would be extended to electronically stored information.

Article 1461, which authorizes a request for production, would be extended to include electronically stored information.

In addition, new Article 1633.1 would authorize trial testimony by remote video if the witness is beyond the court's subpoena power.