In General Motors, LLC v. Buchanan, Docket No. S21G1147 (June 1, 2022), the husband of Marie Buchanan sued General Motors (“GM”), alleging that a defect in the electronic stability control system of her 2007 Chevy Trailblazer caused it to crash, resulting in her death. Several years into the case, Buchanan sought to take the deposition of Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, pointing to her statements that she took responsibility for overhauling GM’s response to vehicle defect issues, and that she promised to personally review all death inquiries.
GM moved for a protective order, submitting an affidavit from Ms. Barra that she did not know anything about the sensor defect, and argued that a request to depose her was harassing, oppressive, and constituted an undue burden under Georgia’s protective order statute, OCGA ? 9-11-26(c). It also urged the court to adopt the “apex doctrine,” which would require the discovering party to establish that the corporate deponent’s testimony was unique, and that it could be obtained from no other source. The trial court rejected GM’s demand to completely block the deposition but limited it to three hours. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
The Georgia Supreme Court reversed and held that trial court failed to properly consider whether a corporate executive’s high rank, the executive’s lack of unique personal knowledge of relevant facts, and the availability of information from other sources demonstrated good cause for a protective order from a deposition, but declined to “hold that a trial court must find that good cause is presumptively or conclusively established in each instance that a movant has demonstrated that an executive is ‘sufficiently high-ranking’ and lacks unique personal knowledge of discoverable information not available through other means.” The Court felt that the burden should be placed on the party moving for the protective order rather than the party requesting the discovery.