John Deere’s chief financial officer and senior vice president is fair game to be deposed after a federal judge this week rejected the company’s attempts to block multi-district litigation plaintiffs from deposing the executive about whether John Deere considers a “right to repair” legislation in preparing financial reports.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Iain D. Johnston for the Northern District of Illinois denied John Deere’s requests for a protective order after the company tried to use an apex witness doctrine that limited “overly burdensome discovery requests” for top-level executives of a corporation. Deere & Co., the parent company of the agricultural manufacturing company, sought to block its CFO and SVP Joshua Jepsen from being deposed. John Deere’s motion relied on the apex witness doctrine, “a common law mechanism to limit overly burdensome discovery requests directed at top-level executive officers of a corporation or entity, particularly where the deposition has certain harassing qualities,'” the opinion said.