Legal Definitions - fishing expedition

A "fishing expedition" in a legal context refers to an overly broad, speculative, or unfocused attempt to gather information, typically during the discovery phase of a lawsuit. It occurs when one party requests a vast amount of documents or asks numerous questions without a clear, specific reason, hoping to stumble upon something relevant or damaging to the opposing party.

This approach is often based on mere suspicion or a hunch rather than concrete evidence or a well-defined legal theory, and it generally exceeds the permissible scope of information gathering allowed by court rules. Courts often disallow such requests to prevent harassment, protect privacy, and ensure efficiency in litigation.

Here are some examples illustrating a fishing expedition:

• Employment Discrimination Case: An employee sues their former employer for wrongful termination and age discrimination. The employee's attorney demands access to all personnel files for every employee hired or fired by the company nationwide over the last 20 years, along with all internal communications about hiring and firing policies.

  This is a fishing expedition because the request is excessively broad. While some comparative personnel data might be relevant, demanding *all* files for *all* employees nationwide over two decades goes far beyond what is reasonably necessary to prove age discrimination in a single termination case. The attorney is likely hoping to find a pattern of discrimination that may or may not exist, rather than focusing on evidence directly related to their client's specific claim.

• Contract Dispute: Company A sues Company B for breach of a specific software development contract signed two years ago. Company A's lawyers demand every single email, internal memo, and chat log from all employees of Company B for the past decade, regardless of their involvement with the specific contract.

  This constitutes a fishing expedition because Company A is casting an extremely wide net, seeking information from unrelated employees over an excessive timeframe, without a specific, articulable reason connected to the breach of *this particular contract*. They are hoping to uncover *something* that might be useful, rather than seeking specific evidence relevant to the case.

• Intellectual Property Lawsuit: A small tech startup accuses a large corporation of stealing its patented software algorithm. The large corporation's legal team demands access to all source code, design documents, and internal communications for every product the startup has ever developed, including those entirely unrelated to the patent in question, and also requests the personal financial records of the startup's founders.

  This is a fishing expedition because the corporation is demanding information far beyond the scope of the alleged patent infringement. While the specific algorithm's source code and related design documents are relevant, demanding *all* product code and the founders' personal finances is an attempt to uncover unrelated vulnerabilities or simply overwhelm the smaller company, rather than focusing on evidence pertinent to the patent dispute.