MindGeek Fighting Requests for Foreign Discovery Assistance in LA Case

The U.S. District Court in Central California should deny plaintiff Serena Fleites’ request “for issuance of overbroad, burdensome, and improper discovery requests to a group of foreign, non-party accounting entities operating under the Grant Thornton name,” said MindGeek and its affiliated defendants in an opposition brief Wednesday (docket 2:21-cv-04920). Fleites sued the company and its affiliated defendants in May 2021, alleging the owner of the video hosting site Pornhub ran one of the largest trafficking ventures in the world, including victimizing thousands of minors for their own financial profit. Her suit alleged that MindGeek “solicited, optimized, commercialized, and monetized” her child sexual abuse material on its tube sites and stonewalled her efforts “to have this illegal content removed so that they could continue to profit.” She further alleged that MindGeek and its affiliates “carried out and hid their trafficking venture through the creation of hundreds of sham subsidiaries and affiliates located in dozens of jurisdictions throughout the world,” which is why she’s asking for “international judicial assistance” for the discovery process. Fleites “is not permitted to burden non-parties with requests for information that can be obtained from Defendants,” said MindGeek. “Non-party discovery is generally only appropriate when a party has attempted and failed to obtain the information sought from the opposing party.” The court should not allow Fleites “to rope foreign diplomats and nonparties into this action with improper discovery demands,” it said.