Civil Procedure MBE Tip of the Day

Answer to the Civil Procedure MBE Question

Subject: Civil Procedure

Legal Issue: Discovery

Legal Rule and Analysis: Pursuant to FRCP 26, a party must provide a copy of “any insurance agreement under which an insurance business may be liable to satisfy all or part of a possible judgment in the action or to indemnify or reimburse for payments made to satisfy the judgment.”  This is part of the mandatory disclosures that each party must make.

In this case, under Rule 26, both parties must make mandatory disclosures during discovery.  This includes any relevant insurance policies.  It does not matter whether the plaintiff requests insurance information.  The defendant is obligated to disclose it and provide all of the information to the plaintiff.

Conclusion: The defendant must provide insurance policy information to the plaintiff.

Look at the answer choices provided. Choose an answer choice that matches your conclusion. Review the other answer choices provided.  The answer choice (B) is therefore correct. (A) is incorrect because the defendant must provide this to the plaintiff without a request as it is one of the “automatic disclosures.” (C) is incorrect because the insurance policy is relevant and should be disclosed right away pursuant to the federal rules. (D) is incorrect. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 411, this statement is true. However, here, the plaintiff is not trying to admit the insurance policy into evidence. Remember, that under Rule 26 “Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.”

MBE Tip: If you got distracted by answer choice (D), you are not alone!  Generally, if the answer choice stems from another subject altogether (Evidence, here, instead of Civil Procedure), it is usually incorrect.  These kinds of choices might be good law, but they don’t actually answer the question because they are dealing with an entirely different concept.  A careful reading of this question would note that we are concerned about what happens during discovery.  While there certainly are rules that dictate whether evidence regarding insurance is admissible at trial, that’s not what this question is asking.  Stick with the answer choices that focus on the subject at hand.