BRING RECEIPTS: Court “Troubled” that TCPA Plaintiff and Defense Counsel Are Telling Different Stories and Its a Little Weird

Hi everyone–sooooooo good to be back.

Was on another famous Troutman “vacation” with the boys– i.e. I drove 6,000 miles (literally) and visited a bunch of ballparks over the last two weeks. Will tell you all about it sometime.

For now though I have a different story.

In Gramps v. Czar Marketing, 2026 WL 1835404 (M.D. Fl. June 25, 2026) a discovery battle between the parties appears to have gotten a bit chippy–and the judge over the case suspects somebody is being less than honest.

In the Court’s words:

After reviewing the papers, the Court is troubled by the different versions of events set forth by counsel and the lack of any documentation to support
counsel’s respective positions. There is no dispute that Defendants served responses on December 1, 2025. Plaintiff claims that
on December 2, 2025, Defendants’ counsel confirmed in writing that Defendants would supplement. This written confirmation
was not provided to the Court. Counsel agrees that they conducted a substantive Local Rule 3.01(g) telephonic meet and confer
on December 22, 2025, regarding the discovery requests. Plaintiff claims that defense counsel represented that Defendant would
supplement “shortly.” Defense counsel clarifies that she stated that she would confer with her clients regarding some of the
requests, otherwise objected to production, and made no express representation about what additional information would be
supplemented or provided.
Plaintiff claims that what followed “was an unbroken chronology of further written promises” of supplementation on January
16, January 19, February 24, February 26, February 27, and March 10, 2026, none of which materialized. (Doc. 45 at 6). None
of these alleged “written promises” were filed with the Court. In contrast, defense counsel characterizes this time as a period of
cooperative settlement negotiations, culminating in the unsuccessful mediation on May 28, 2026. (Doc. 46 at 7).

Hmmmm.

It gets even weirder:

On April 21, 2026, Plaintiff’s counsel sent defense counsel the formal Deficiency Notice Regarding Defendants’ December 1,
2025, Discovery Responses (the “Deficiency Letter”). This letter is not filed with the Court. According to Plaintiff, on May 5,
2026 (the same day Defendants filed their motion for summary judgment), defense counsel sent an email to Plaintiff’s counsel
stating, “At this time, my clients are not in agreement to provide a discovery supplement with the breadth at which you request.”
Defense counsel claims that Plaintiff’s omitted a second sentence from her email which stated: “If you wish to plan a follow
up meet and confer since we have not been able to discuss this meaningfully, I am happy to do so.” Again, this email has not
been submitted to the Court.

Plaintiff then claims that defense counsel confirmed on May 28, 2026, that Defendants would not be producing any of the
discovery at issue. Defense counsel disagrees and states that while the parties’ counsel did confer via email on May 28, 2026 to
discuss that impasse had been reached during mediation, all other communications were about case management in an entirely
unrelated case and contained a subject line referring to the unrelated case. Neither party submitted this email for the Court’s
review. Plaintiff’s counsel further states, that the last communication she had with Plaintiff’s counsel regarding discovery in
this case was on May 5, 2026.

Ultimately the court decided it just could not figure out what was going on here and denied the motion without prejudice–meaning Plaintiff can refile and this time, presumably he will provide all of the email evidence regarding defendant’s broken promises.

I will say it is always a bad idea to break your word in litigation. One of the reasons I am so highly regarded on both sides of the v. is that no matter what else I may do I always keep my word. Always. 

Its the only thing we are really in control of. And in a very real sense the only true form of morality out there.

Something I talked to my boys about on our long road trip. 🙂

Missed you all.

Chat soon.