Emerging Litigation Podcast

CEO Depositions and the Apex Doctrine with Rachel Lary

• Tom Hagy

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You say you want a deposition?

Plaintiff attorneys often request and are sometimes successful in deposing corporate CEOs and other chief executives. But there are many times when defense attorneys want to spare the C-suite from what can be high-risk and time-consuming exercises for someone whose knowledge or expertise may have little or nothing to do with the facts and issues in a case. 

In this episode, I talk with Rachel M. Lary, a litigator with a nationwide practice at Lightfoot, Franklin & White, about the Apex Doctrine—a legal principle that protects high-ranking executives from being deposed unless certain conditions are met. Rachel explains how courts weigh an executive’s actual knowledge of a case, the availability of less intrusive discovery, and how judges have ruled on the doctrine around the country. (Her firm's technologist, Sam McAllister, created an interactive map showing state-by-state treatment of the Apex Doctrine. We interviewed Sam in 2023.)

Listen in and you will see why Fortune 500 companies rely on Rachel to represent them as national litigation counsel. I appreciate her sharing her insights on the podcast. I also appreciate that Rachel agreed to give a video tour of her remarkably neat office, which is what she thought I requested. I have a degree in communication, and maybe I should brush up. Rachel is both knowledgeable and a good sport. 

As always, if you have comments or wish to participate in one our projects please drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com.

Tom Hagy
Litigation Enthusiast and
Host of the Emerging Litigation Podcast
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If you have comments or want to get involved in one of our projects, drop me a note at Editor@LitigationConferences.com. 

Tom Hagy:

Welcome to the Emerging Litigation Podcast. I'm Tom Hagy, longtime litigation enthusiast, editor, publisher and now podcaster. I'm founder of HB Litigation, which is now part of Critical Legal Content, a business I founded in 2012 to serve as a content marketing department for law firms and litigation service providers. And now here's today's episode. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating. If you want to reach me, please check out my contact information in the show notes.

Tom Hagy:

Let's start this episode from the perspective of a plaintiff attorney litigating against a major company. This defendant has vast resources and thousands of employees. They've got a whole bunch of lawyers, they've got anxious shareholders and a very attentive board of directors. Now the plaintiff wants to depose as many executives as possible, including those at the top, including the very top, the chief executive officer. So why? After all, CEOs are kind of a big deal. For many attorneys, though, a CEO deposition can mean an opportunity to obtain information you can't get anywhere else, or expose a company-wide strategy or better understand their decision-making. They could expose a disconnect in the company's defense, so maybe there's a need to establish an organization's culture, but can't somebody else do that by requesting a high-level deposition? What else might the plaintiff attorney be doing? Are they trying to signal the seriousness of the case or is it a matter of getting press? Now look at this from the other side, from the perspective of the CEO and a defense attorney. This isn't a hypothetical.

Tom Hagy:

High-profile CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook or Elon Musk have been summoned to testify in major suits involving high-stakes antitrust allegations or battles over intellectual property, and their testimonies have sparked extensive media coverage. They've ended up setting legal precedents and they've influenced public perception of the companies. But there are a lot of lesser-known leaders who find themselves on plaintiff attorneys' wish lists and cases involving everything from product liability to employment discrimination to regulatory violations, and the stakes are high. What a CEO says in a deposition can shift the entire trajectory of a case. Of course, defense attorneys for corporate clients aren't pushovers. Their stiff resistance typically hinges on more than just protecting their client's time or reputation. They build defenses to prevent what they often claim are phishing expeditions or attempts at intimidation, or to get a CEO to fumble in some way. Say something that they can. You know a thread they can pull on. It may sound inconsistent with something else that the company may have testified to.

Tom Hagy:

Now, central to the defense attorney's playbook is the Apex Doctrine. This is a legal principle invoked to shield high-ranking executives from depositions unless the requesting party can show that the executive possesses unique personal knowledge unobtainable from other sources. The doctrine's foundation rests on balancing judicial efficiency with fair access to evidence, and courts across jurisdictions weigh numerous factors before compelling such testimony. So what exactly are the contours of the Apex Doctrine? What hurdles must attorneys clear to convince a judge that a CEO's deposition is or is not warranted? To help us navigate this, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rachel Lary, a partner at Lightfoot Franklin White. She's a seasoned litigator with a specialty in complex product and business litigation. She's the right person to talk to. Her expertise not only spans high stakes corporate disputes, but also encompasses the nuanced tactics required for successful advocacy in deposition battles. Her insights will illuminate the practical realities behind the Apex Doctrine and the strategic calculus attorneys must make.

Tom Hagy:

With that, here is my conversation with Rachel Lary, a partner with Lightfoot, Franklin and White. I hope you enjoy it. P. S. What you didn't get to enjoy is a guided tour of Rachel's extremely neat office, which you can only see on the video. So we encourage you to take a look at that. Or if you're watching the video right now that'll make no sense, but you can see how neat it is, and you almost got a tour because I'm not clear about things. All right now, here's the episode. Well, Rachel Lary, thanks very much for joining me to talk about this today. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and then we'll dive into the topic?

Rachel Lary:

I am actually here in Birmingham, Alabama. I work and have worked my whole career at a firm called Lightfoot Franklin and White. We are a litigation boutique. I've been here for about 20 years now. Majority of my practice is product litigation, although I do some business litigation too. I became interested in the Apex structure because, as you can imagine, I had a case.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, that has a way of getting a person to focus. So why don't you give us some background on the Apex Doctrine and what are its objectives?

Rachel Lary:

So the Apex Doctrine actually is derived through federal common law. It's derived from Rule 26, that Rule 26C specifically, that provides certain protections against discovery that may be harassing or embarrassing or unduly burdensome. And so the APEX doctrine hence its name, apex is to protect those individuals who are at the apex of a corporation or a company, c-suite executives or other high-ranking executives, to protect them against depositions that may be harassing or burdensome. Given the certain circumstances over several decades in the federal system, federal court system is factors through which the courts will determine whether or not a protective order should be issued to protect against depositions of executives.

Rachel Lary:

And so there's certain factors that they look at, the first being the obvious is this deponent a high ranking official or executive? Second being do they have any sort of specialized or personal knowledge? Third being knowledge about the relevant facts of the case. And then, fourth, whether there's other, less intrusive means of getting the same discovery.

Tom Hagy:

In other words, are there other lower level ranking?

Rachel Lary:

employees who may have the same discovery. In other words, are there other lower-level ranking employees who may have the same knowledge?

Tom Hagy:

So it has to be C-suite. Do they go by title? Do they go by number of employees? Or, like you know, I'm the CEO of my company. I've got five people or something. So how does it work?

Rachel Lary:

You know, it depends.

Rachel Lary:

So, there's not an exact title that you have to have in order to be to claim that the Apex doctrine should protect you. Now, if you the bigger the company, the bigger the organization and the higher ranking you are, the more likely that you may be protected against deposition because you won't have the knowledge or the relevant facts about the individual, about the litigation and the individual facts and claims that are involved in the case. So, generally speaking, the knowledge factor is really the most important factor and so the more knowledge that a high ranking executive has about the relevant facts of the case, the more likely they are to be deposed. The less knowledge that they have about the facts of the case, the less likely they are to be deposed. So really the driving factor is the knowledge, not necessarily the title or the number of employees.

Tom Hagy:

That makes sense. So what's the risk of a CEO going in and being deposed or having to testify? What's the risk to them?

Rachel Lary:

Well, I guess it's you know you have the risks are always associated with a deposition right, especially of any corporate representative that they're going to buy in the company, and then that corporation has to live with that testimony forever.

Rachel Lary:

That, in and of itself, is really not what makes the what makes depositions of high ranking executives risky. The risk is simply that they don't have the knowledge or the expertise to be able to give really relevant and good testimony about the facts of the case. The risk is that their job is not involved in whatever the facts of the case were. The risk is that their job really is to run that company, to make sure that the shareholders are happy, and if they're spending their time being deposed in cases for which they have no knowledge or information, they're not really doing the job that they've been assigned to do and they start becoming a professional witness instead of running the company, and so that really is the biggest risk. Along with, the plaintiffs know that corporations don't like to have their CEOs deposed for all of those various reasons. So it becomes really a leverage point to try to increase the value of the case, to try to get the corporation to settle Again, just as a pressure point that plaintiffs like to use.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, yeah, when we talked about this earlier, you know, I see Yoka get up and say a bunch of things that maybe they had just learned about. Excuse me, sorry about that, that a CEO can go in and testify about something they don't know about. Of course they wouldn't talk about something they didn't know about, but then there's a risk of them saying I don't know.

Rachel Lary:

Right, exactly. So again, when you're fighting to protect a high-ranking official or CEO by virtue of the APEC doctrine, what you're saying is they don't have any knowledge for the courts to actually issue the protective order, which generally means you've got to put for some sort of evidence to meet these apex doctrine factors, which necessarily means you're going to have an affidavit from that deponent, from the high ranking official, saying I don't have any specialized or unique knowledge, so you've got that. But then if the court says, well, sorry, I think you do, I think you are going to have to sit for deposition, then from a litigation strategy, you've got to weigh the risk between do I feed this high ranking official certain pieces of information so that they can answer the questions that the jury is going to want them to be able to answer?

Tom Hagy:

Right yeah.

Rachel Lary:

And so it's nuanced. You're having to say and admit my CEO didn't know this before this deposition. But now you've asked for this deposition, the court said I've had to put her up, and so I have now downloaded that information to her so that she can answer these questions. Because one of the worst things, I think from a jury perspective, you can do is have a CEO of a company not have enough information to either accept responsibility where they need to or help the jury understand why the company is not responsible.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, Okay. So what's the plaintiff's argument when they want a CEO of a large? I mean, we're talking, let's make it easy, let's talk about a Fortune 500 company. You know, just a massive company that the only ones I've known were. A lot of their time was spent, you know, making shareholders and investors, you know, satisfied with what's happening at the company. So what's the plaintiff's argument for wanting them to post?

Rachel Lary:

Well, setting aside what we've already talked about, and just for leverage purposes and purposes. You know they wanted again to try to create pressure and to try to get those. What's better than a soundbite from the CEO right?

Tom Hagy:

Right.

Rachel Lary:

So what they say in order to support that the APEC structure should not apply or is a bad thing, is they really claim it's an archaic view and it creates a hierarchy. And what they say is you shouldn't be able to avoid a deposition just because of your title In fact, I've seen it being referenced by the plaintiffs as a discrimination doctrine. That you're, yeah, that you, that only those most powerful and most elite and have the most money are the ones who get this protection. And how is that fair? How can you have a, for example, let's say, a single mom who is a lower level employee, who happens to have personalized knowledge about the facts of the case? She's not going to get the protection. So how in the world is this?

Rachel Lary:

by the mere fact you're a CEO, your time is more important than a single mom who's just working to try to support her children and is going to have to take time away from her job. How is that fair? And what I would say is that's the old way of thinking about the apex doctrine. So the title alone is not what protects that executive from a deposition. What protects that executive from a deposition. What protects the executive from a deposition is that, as a result of their high-ranking position, they lack any of that relevant knowledge. That's the distinction.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah. Yeah, I can see where a downside. I mean it'd be hard for a CEO of a large company to get any kind of sympathy whatsoever. I would think that's true.

Rachel Lary:

And you know what the plaintiffs also say is on that very point. Well, look, surely the CEO has three hours to sit for a deposition and you know, I'll make it ease on her, I'll come to where she is. Get ease on her, I'll come to where she is. And that's also one of their main arguments is it's actually not burdensome because I'm going to put these limitations on how this deposition is going to go forward.

Rachel Lary:

But, like those of us who litigate day in and day out know that preparing anyone for deposition is not a three-hour process. The deposition itself is three hours, but the amount of prep time to get that individual ready for deposition is really where the burden comes in of time and expense. And again, I keep repeating myself but when you also have a CEO who doesn't have knowledge and you're considering downloading certain knowledge, that takes even more time. So generally the way we have framed it before is it's not three hours in this case. It becomes three hours in every other case that she or that he may have to sit for deposition. She or that he may have to sit for deposition, and that's where the burden comes in.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, yeah, we'll make it easy. Come on in, we'll come to them. Yeah, yeah, I could see it. Yeah, my nephew gave a five-minute wedding toast and he took it very seriously and I think he probably worked three weeks on it.

Rachel Lary:

Right, it was very good, though, well, it takes a lot of work to make it look easy.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, that's right. So talk about your survey. You guys are keeping track of this across the country, obviously. Well, I was going to say obviously federal, but that's not even necessarily uniform. Tell me about your survey. What states? What do we say at the federal level?

Rachel Lary:

Tell me about your survey. What states? What do we say at the federal level? So, because the federal courts are the ones who first created the Apex Doctrine, so the federal circuits and, from a federal standpoint, more of those courts recognize, specifically recognize the Apex Doctrine and specifically adopted the Apex Doctrine. The only federal circuit who has rejected the Apex Doctrine is the Sixth Circuit, which is comprised of Tennessee, kentucky, ohio and Michigan. So that's the only circuit. Who's currently said, look, we're not going to adopt the Apex Doctrine?

Rachel Lary:

So we've got a website that literally just has a map that shows by color code, green being good, you've adopted the doctrine, and red being no, we've rejected it.

Rachel Lary:

And we have both from the federal courts and then from the states. The states, as you can imagine, there's not as many that have formally adopted the APEC structure. The last time I checked there was one, two, three, four, five, six states Georgia, michigan, florida, texas, california and West Virginia. And so again on this website that we created really for this very purpose of tracking the trends and making sure that we know what is the most recent case, that identifies what the state or that federal circuit is doing. And then we've got, as you can imagine, lots of states in between what they haven't formally adopted the apex doctrine, but they also haven't rejected it. Maybe there's a case where they've looked at the some of these factors, but not all of these factors. Maybe it's a case where they shift the burden to one party or the other under the apex doctrine in different ways than the apex doctrine requires. So you're right, it's very different depending on the jurisdiction and the state that you're in.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, and in Michigan it can depend on whether you're in state or federal, I guess. Then right.

Rachel Lary:

Absolutely.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, okay, unless there was another one there, but that's the one I caught.

Rachel Lary:

That was no no, no, that's it, you're absolutely right. Okay, there was another one there, but that's the one I caught. That's it, you're absolutely right.

Tom Hagy:

Okay, and so if people want to get hold of this survey, this is not necessarily public how should they get it?

Rachel Lary:

I'm happy for them to reach out to me. It is password protected.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Lary:

But I'm happy to give that out. It truly is a great resource tool if you have a case where either there has been a threat of your high ranking official being deposed or they've already filed the deposition in this, or, quite frankly, even if you're trying to figure out whether or not you've got. You are in a state in which you're going to have the protections or not, and there are certain things you can do to start moving the needle one way or the other. Right.

Tom Hagy:

All right. Well, we'll get to that. We'll get to that point in a minute too. So so there have been some recent cases since you and I started talking about this. So what can you tell us about some recent developments?

Rachel Lary:

So one of the most recent is actually involves Mark Zuckerberg.

Tom Hagy:

Zuckerberg.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, Zuckerberg.

Tom Hagy:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I thought you said Zuckerberg, I'm not hearing things correctly. You please keep going.

Rachel Lary:

I thought you said Zuckerberg. I'm not hearing things correctly. You please keep going. No, I may have. Look, that's what I'm not. I've been known to mispronounce the last name. Interesting litigation surrounding Meta's use of arguably copyrighted information to train its AI model. You may be familiar with Sarah Silverman and other comedians who have sued saying you don't get to use my copyright information to then train your AI model of how to then create a speech that sounds like me, right, and so, as part of that litigation, the plaintiff, sarah Silverman, asked requested to depose Mark Zuckerberg. See, I almost did it today.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, I see. Okay, I'll keep you straight on this.

Rachel Lary:

Okay. So the question really became does he have personalized or specialized knowledge about the allegations of the case? And Meta said no, he doesn't Look, he's just at the top of the chain. You know he knows what's going on, but no, he wasn't making the exact decisions. And in fact you have, as you can imagine, process engineers, software engineers underneath him who really have the knowledge that these individuals plaintiffs are wanting to seek.

Rachel Lary:

And the court simply said did an analysis and said no, he's a chief decision maker, he had direct control over the AI initiatives and the programs. He actually had direct supervision over certain products. And so it was actually a federal court, northern District of California, and they ordered they denied the motion for protective order and ordered him to sit for deposition. So again, you know the trend that I see while the plaintiffs like to say that the recent trend is that the courts are rejecting the Apex doctrine or finding that it doesn't protect a CEO, I think the true trend is just really doing a deep dive on again, what information can they provide? And so that's really what it came down to in the Medicaid there was a reason.

Tom Hagy:

So I'm sorry, so in that case. So in that case they said he did have to sit. I guess I wonder if that has taken place.

Rachel Lary:

I mean yeah, I don't know Well, so the order was entered at the end of last year.

Tom Hagy:

I'll look for it. Yeah, because I do remember that case, because Sarah Silverman is ridiculously funny and the book has a funny, some funny title, I don't know. It's something like you know her life as a bedwetter or something. I'm like it's just fun when you have these sophisticated arguments coming up and then they refer to the actual book and it's something like that, but not to make fun of that problem, but anyway, she's very funny.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah so.

Tom Hagy:

I'll take a look at that one. There were some other ones too.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, so another well-known name Elon Musk. The before Elon Musk, before the administration Elon Musk.

Tom Hagy:

I'm familiar. I'm familiar with his metamorphosis, yeah.

Rachel Lary:

Yes, this is when he was just running Tesla.

Tom Hagy:

Right.

Rachel Lary:

And there was an unfortunate accident with a with a young man in florida, um, where, unfortunately, um, the allegation was that the software in the tesla um had an issue that resulted in an unintended acceleration and unfortunately, the young, the young man, passed away.

Rachel Lary:

Um, interestingly, elon called the family after it occurred to give his sympathy and condolences and, as part of that conversation, actually said to the family we're doing an investigation, we're going to look into what happened and whether the policies and procedures that I expect to be followed were followed.

Rachel Lary:

And so it was that conversation with the family that the plaintiff said was the hook for them being able to depose him. And Elon came in and filed an affidavit saying, number one, he didn't recall that conversation and, number two, he wasn't involved in that investigation, involved in that investigation and that there were other lower ranking employees who were involved in the investigation who could give actual information about what they found, if anything. And the Florida court state court granted him the protective order and he did not have to sit for deposition. Now a nuance for Florida is, you may recall, they are one of the states that has officially adopted the APEC structure and in fact, what they did is they the Supreme Court of Florida amended their civil rules of procedure to specifically add a section that set forth the parameters and the factors associated with the APEC structure.

Tom Hagy:

Okay, all right, yeah, you can. And the factors associated with the apex stratum? Okay, all right, yeah, I mean it's an interesting case. I mean you can see where his instincts were to show compassion Absolutely, and in the legal world that's not always the right thing to do. And then he says the thing about the investigation he brought up the investigation. The investigation, he brought up the investigation. And then also, a guy like Elon Musk is also somebody who is considered to be an inventor of things, right, and you know, isn't he an engineer or something? So you can see a guy like that where plaintiffs would argue wait a second, he knows a lot about these things Absolutely.

Rachel Lary:

You know, I think there's. There is always room for sympathy, I believe, in any any case, where there are tragic circumstances, there should always be a means or which the corporation can offer their sincere sympathies for the tragic injury or the tragic death, without necessarily accepting responsibility for it. Right and and? And so you know that was a, in my mind, a good thing for him to want to do.

Tom Hagy:

Um, it just unfortunately resulted in him having to argue why he shouldn't be deposed right, you told me when we talked one one of the reasons you became obsessed with the Apex Doctrine sorry, became involved in the Apex Doctrine was a case where you had a manufacturer and the plaintiffs wanted to depose the CEO of that company. So tell me about that.

Rachel Lary:

That's right. It was in Georgia. Since this case, georgia has also passed legislation adopting the APEX doctrine. At the time this case was pending they had not, and so the plaintiffs wanted to depose the CEO of this product manufacturer and argued really very broadly that because their claims were a product defect claim, it involved, as all product defect claims do, the safety of the product and this high ranking official, this product manufacturer had created a safety program. Safety program and that was plaintiff's argument and their hook for why this executive had knowledge for which they should be able to depose him. Or case in which they have no knowledge about the design, the development, the manufacturing, the assembly or much less the details of the actual accident and how it happened and why it happened, or any information about the investigation that may or may not have been done by the corporation about that accident that she should. Despite all of that, just the plaintiff said, just because there was a safety program created under that CEO's watch, they should be able to depose that CEO watch. They should be able to depose that CEO.

Rachel Lary:

Interestingly, because at the time Georgia had not said one way or the other whether they were adopting the Apex Doctrine, the trial court ignored all of those Apex Doctrine factors which weighed in our favor.

Rachel Lary:

Obviously and this is what some of the state courts do they say, look, discovery is broad.

Rachel Lary:

And this is what some of the state courts do said, no, you can't trial court, you can't ignore those factors, you have to at least consider them. And so when it was remanded back down to the trial court, once the trial court did consider those what I would say are very important factors, the trial court said yeah, I'm going to issue this protective order against having to make the CEO sit, issue this protective order against having to make the CEO set. It was not long after that that the legislator in Georgia passed a bill that specifically set out the apex doctrine. In Georgia and I actually am preparing for this call I look just to see how many times it's been applied and whether the court has said has issued a protected order or has not. And, as you can imagine, it's pretty much split down the middle. But again, every single time, at least in the published opinions, the court is really relying on whether or not that CEO has, or executive has knowledge that's relevant to the facts.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, it sounds so simple.

Rachel Lary:

It really does.

Tom Hagy:

They're going to depose somebody. Well, do they know anything about this? Maybe?

Rachel Lary:

Well, you know, it becomes interesting about what then is relevant. Is the safety of the product relevant in a product liability case and if it is, if you have an executive create a safety program, does that open them up for deposition? And then the corporation is arguably they shouldn't be but could be in a catch-22 of I don't want to say anything publicly or create anything that may benefit the corporation at the risk of being deposed, which should not be the way it is at all yeah, gotcha.

Rachel Lary:

You know what is relevant is really becomes interesting and, as you can imagine, the plaintiffs take a really broad view of that.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, they do. Yeah. Having having been involved in it just from a distance, writing about it, and having been involved in litigation, I'm shocked at how broad it can be interpreted. It's like what, what now?

Rachel Lary:

Right, right, you know. Yeah, safety is a broad topic and if an executive has information about safety in a product defect case, then that executive is going to be behind every product that claim.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah, yeah, because I had sued and then I was countersued. You know, come to think of it, I was a CEO of my little company there you go, the one and only One and only employee.

Tom Hagy:

It was very close to that. Yes, very close, within 100 people. No, it was it. I won. By the way, the other thing is okay. I didn't ask you specifically about this. We don't have to talk about the Sixth Circuit, because it struck me as that's the one outlier about the Sixth Circuit, because it struck me as that's the one outlier. Maybe I should go back and just take a look at that case. You don't happen to remember why that one split off from the other circuits, do you?

Rachel Lary:

No other than it's a case that came down in 2012. And what it basically said was that they said the APEC doctrine allows the court to improperly assume that the depositions of a corporate officer would be unduly burdensome. And what they said is without proof of the undue burden. And so the question I have is I wonder if the Sixth Circuit would look at it differently if there was proof of the undue burden, by offering an affidavit setting forth again all the factors and reasons. You know it's not going to be enough to have the title. It's not going to be enough that you've got a busy schedule. It's not going to be enough that you've got hundreds of thousands of employees potentially reporting to you. I mean, you can, that can all be true, and if you were the one that helped negotiate the provision of the contract that now is at issue, you're going to be deposed.

Tom Hagy:

Right yeah.

Rachel Lary:

Right? So anyway, it'd be interesting to see what the sixth circuit would do, however many years later now. Yeah Well, maybe you'll end up there. You can keep your your apex career going. Interesting to see what the sixth circuit would would do um, however many years later now.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah well, maybe you'll end up there. You can keep your apex career going, um, so what? Uh, so I want to talk to a little bit about. So, well, speaking of that, what if you want to get this in your state? Um, and you mentioned you had a lot of amicus support, uh, your case. So, some pretty big companies I think you mentioned in my notes I think you said Google, google, right? No, I can't read. It wasn't Google. It might've been, but it wasn't in my notes it was. It was Coca-Cola, delta, those are. Those are big Georgia companies and Kia.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, and Home Depot.

Tom Hagy:

And Home Depot.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, no, kia is not obviously headquartered in Georgia, but they recently opened a plant in Georgia, but Delta is headquartered there, home Depot, coca-cola, and you know this issue is important for large corporations like those because they want to make sure that their executives are going to be distracted by constantly having to raise their right hand in cases that they shouldn't be being deposed in, in cases where it really is an effort to harass the corporate officers. These companies said in their briefing Amika's briefing to the Supreme Court was you know, we chose Georgia, quite frankly, because it was at least this is what Kia said because it was portrayed to us as a business friendly state. And if you're going to allow a deposition to go forward when there is no real connection between the allegations of this case and no involvement or role of the executive, that's a problem.

Rachel Lary:

It does create a huge distraction. It is a huge burden and they were pretty vocal about again their support of some type of protection for these high ranking officials.

Tom Hagy:

Okay, Now that was in your case where the amicus came in. Is that correct?

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, that was the case in Georgia. Yes, yeah, and that then resulted in, and again, the Georgia legislator passing a bill that said okay.

Tom Hagy:

Yeah.

Rachel Lary:

Now, you know, we could talk all day about the tort reform needed in Georgia, but that was one small, small aspect. We're still working on some others.

Tom Hagy:

I think I've got everything I want. I think you've explained it all extremely well. I really appreciate it.

Rachel Lary:

Yeah, absolutely Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate that. I'm surprised to know that there may be others who would be interested in APEX doctrine, but I'm glad to know there may be some of them out there.

Tom Hagy:

I'm sure there are. Well, thanks again. The Emerging Litigation Podcast is a production of Critical Legal Content, which owns the awesome brand HB Litigation. Critical Legal Content is a company I founded in 2012. That was a long time ago. What we do is simple we create content that's critical on legal topics for law firms and legal service providers. I believe we even have a catchy tagline, which is your legal content marketing department. That kind of content can be blogs, papers, they can be podcasts, webinars and we have a good time doing it and S4HB litigation. Well, that's the name under which we publish interesting at least interesting to me legal news items, webinars, articles, guest articles, all on emerging litigation topics. That's what we do. Once again, I'm Tom Hagee, with Critical Legal Content and HB Litigation. If you like what you hear and you want to participate, give me a shout. My contact information's in the show notes. Thanks for listening, thank you.