State Farm Blasts Plaintiff's ‘Fishing Expedition’ for 12,000 Agents’ Call Records
Attorneys for plaintiff Thomas Gebka and defendant State Farm conferred via videoconference May 30 about all issues Gebka raised in a May 20 motion to compel discovery (see 2405210004), the parties’ joint status report said Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-05546) in U.S.…
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District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. Gebka’s motion seeks production of all records and notes for all calls that State Farm or any State Farm agency made from Oct. 10, 2018, to the present. Gebka’s October 2022 Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action alleges that State Farm “engaged in a national telemarketing campaign to promote its insurance via unsolicited calls to persons who had no prior relationship” with the insurer (see 2210110009). During the May 30 conferral, State Farm claimed for the first time that experts within the company “advised they may not be able to export the data for the call records and notes from the database tables in which State Farm stores it without crashing the system,” Gebka’s position statement in the joint status report said. However, Gebka “contends" it "is routine to export the data,” and proposed State Farm allow Gebka’s expert to do so himself, “which counsel for State Farm stated he knows State Farm will not allow,” it said. Gebka contends that it’s clear State Farm “is not conferring in good faith but is instead attempting to weaponize” the court’s standing order to delay, it said. State Farm’s “impression” is that Gebka “would like to speed through the conferral process and then renew his motion to compel,” said its position statement in the joint status report. During the May 30 conferral, Gebka “rejected all of State Farm’s proposals,” it said. The scope of Gebka’s discovery demands is “enormous” and “contrary” to the court’s Nov. 2023 order cautioning that the plaintiff’s discovery requests need to be “appropriately narrowed” at this stage of the case, the report said. State Farm has produced reports showing that since 2018 -- the beginning of Gebka’s alleged class period -- internet lead vendors EverQuote, ZipQuote and QuoteWizard have sold more than 40 million leads to more than 12,000 State Farm agents, it said. From additional reports that State Farm has produced, “it can be estimated” that there are more than a billion call records for those 12,000 agents, it said. State Farm contends that Gebka has now walked back his earlier positions and is demanding “even broader discovery,” it said. Moreover, it assumes Gebka is demanding such broad information “to engage in a fishing expedition for an alternative theory,” it said.