DENIED: Court Refuses Plaintiff’s Requests To Compel Production In Healthcare, Inc. Case

Defendants who have been forced to fight back against frivolous TCPA lawsuits can continue to take heart from the success of Healthcare, Inc. in its attempt to take the fight to plaintiffs who abuse the law.

In April 2025, we highlighted the Healthcare, Inc. plaintiffs’ (“Healthcare, Inc.”) success in their suit against Robert Doyle (“Defendant” or “Doyle”) in Healthcare, Inc. v. Doyle, 2025 WL 1094309 (D. Az April 11, 2025). You can read that blog here: NOW WE’RE TALKING!: Healthcare, Inc. Sues TCPA Plaintiff to Recover Damages for Frivolous Suit and I Love to See it. In that instance, Doyle had previously filed a lawsuit against Healthcare, Inc. in the wrong jurisdiction, concerning the wrong phone number and incorrectly basing the suit on the wrong legal theory. This cost Healthcare, Inc. a large amount in legal fees. Healthcare, Inc. brought their own suit against Doyle to recover these fees, and Doyle unsuccessfully challenged it with a motion to dismiss.

Healthcare, Inc. has continued to rack up wins as they pursue Doyle for the fees they incurred defending themselves against his previous lawsuit. On September 30, 2025, Doyle brought a motion to compel in an attempt to compel Healthcare, Inc. to provide fully unredacted billing invoices, the entire file from Healthcare, Inc.’s previous counsel, and a privilege log. After ample argumentation between the parties, the court issued their order on the motion on November 17, 2025. Generally, courts look on requests for unredacted financial documents with extreme skepticism. To the extent that these documents are produced because they are relevant to litigation, it is usually with some form of light redactions to protect sensitive information. The same is true for files from a party’s counsel, which could implicate attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine.

In this case, because attorney’s fees are at issue, Healthcare, Inc. stated that they were happy to produce lightly redacted opinion work product related to Doyle’s previous lawsuit so long as attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine was not waived.

Since this case is in the Ninth Circuit, the court applied the Mountain States standard, which asks whether an award of fees would be “inequitable and unreasonable.” This standard requires some degree of transparency when it comes to producing invoices, as it would be an abuse of discretion if there was not enough information to determine whether an award of attorney’s fees would be inequitable or not. Because the billing statements were necessary to determine the merits of Healthcare, Inc.’s request for attorney’s fees, the court ordered them to be produced with light redactions at most without waiving attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine.

The court partially denied Doyle’s motion as to his requests for a privilege log and the entire file from previous counsel. Because this case relates to what was charged and subsequently paid for by Healthcare, Inc., documents related to other topics like discussions between counsel and their client were not relevant. Billing information was relevant to this lawsuit, but communications discussing case strategy and potential costs associated with various approaches to litigation were not.

In short, Healthcare, Inc. produced essential financial documents that will be needed to determine the merits of their claim for attorney’s fees, but nothing more. This represents another success as the parties continue to move through discovery. It’s always great to see someone who has had to deal with a wrongful TCPA lawsuit get an opportunity to push back in court, and we will continue to keep you updated as this case proceeds further.