WCO Presses for Discovery Stay Until Its Motion to Dismiss vs. T-Mobile Is Decided

T-Mobile for years has engaged in a “strategic litigation campaign” designed to “hamstring” WCO Spectrum’s “legitimate efforts” to buy educational broadband service (EBS) wireless spectrum licenses from nonprofit schools and colleges “desperate for cash infusions,” said WCO’s reply memorandum Friday (docket 2:23-cv-04347) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles in further support of its motion to stay discovery pending the court’s resolution of its motion to dismiss. T-Mobile alleges that WCO and multiple co-defendants conspired to defraud T-Mobile out of $10 million involving the EBS spectrum that the FCC customarily licenses to schools (see 2306030002). Now armed with the “supposed account” of an anonymous whistleblower who used to work for WCO, T-Mobile has brought “the overzealous defense of its spectrum monopoly” to this court, said WCO’s memorandum. “Having tired of T-Mobile’s incessant, aggressive, and intrusive efforts to discover its confidential business strategies and plans through discovery, WCO filed the instant motion requesting a protective order staying discovery” until the court rules on its motion to dismiss, it said. The court has “broad discretion to stay discovery” until it disposes of WCO’s motion to dismiss, it said. Neither party “has cited a single case in which a district court was reversed for staying discovery while a fully dispositive motion was pending,” it said. T-Mobile’s fraud theory against WCO is “inherently implausible,” it said. WCO’s motion to dismiss “will dispose of this matter entirely,” it said. Nothing in the 9th Circuit’s jurisprudence, or that of any other appellate court of Appeals, precludes the district court “from staying discovery until that motion is decided,” it said. Nothing certainly compels the court to permit discovery unless it’s convinced that T-Mobile “will be unable to state a claim for relief,” it said.