U.S. District Court Judge Grants Motion to Testify Remotely

United States District Judge Thomas Ludington of the Eastern District of Michigan, Northern Division, recently granted a joint motion to testify remotely sua sponte reasoning that “strange winter conditions and unknown technological issues have made state-to-sate travel as unpredictable as recent as yesterday” provided the compelling circumstances Fed. R. Civ. P. 43(a) requires.

In Kanuszewski, et al. v. Shah, et al., 2023 WL 168749 (E.D. Mich. January 12, 2023), parties moved the court to grant their request that five witnesses, no longer living in Michigan, be permitted to testify remotely in a bench trial set to begin January 31, 2023. The parties asserted that the standard burdens of travel, to wit, time, money, and inconvenience, warranted leave to testify remotely. Judge Ludington, citing the Federal Aviation Administration’s own tweets regarding the FAA’s technological issues and announcing its system outage causing nationwide flight delays, and news reports regarding storms and winter weather adding uncertainty to air travel, found that mere uncertainty provided the good cause and compelling circumstances to grant the request.

Judge Ludington also heralded his Court’s ability to accommodate remote testimony and, in a nod to the importance of security in legal proceedings, added that he would employ “adequate safeguards” to secure the remote testimony.

In its inaugural weeks, 2023 is proving to be a momentous one for how remote videoconference technology is shaping litigation. We recently examined how recent decisions have expanded the scope of FRCP 45 and FRCP 26. While this case is slated to be heard in Michigan, which has an average low temperature of 17 degrees Fahrenheit in January and an average annual snowfall of 170 inches, the very nature of travel suggests that any area at any time could be subject to some sort of weather unpredictability. Whether weather, along with improved remote litigation platforms like Calloquy, continue to change the definition of compelling circumstances, will be something we continue to monitor.