In a filing from February 27, 2025 for Carano v. Disney, attorneys for Disney and Gina Carano filed a joint request to the federal court judge overseeing the case. In this request, the parties sought additional time to conduct discovery and prepare for trial. The court promptly granted the motion and established a new scheduling order for the case. (Carano had posted on Instagram as recently as February 5, 2025 regarding the case, but without specifics.) Requests for additional time are extremely common in lawsuits, especially high profile litigation like this one. But the interesting part of the filing is that we get a glimpse into the process of discovery completed thus far.
What is “Discovery” in a Federal Lawsuit?
A lawsuit is just a series of allegations made by the plaintiff against the defendant. The attorney filing the lawsuit has to have some reasonable measure of evidence that the allegations are true before he or she can file the lawsuit. But in many cases, most of the evidence is still in the possession of the defendant and is not yet available to the plaintiff. Once the lawsuit is filed though, the plaintiff and the defendant have the right to conduct “discovery” into the information and documents held by the other party. For the most part, early discovery takes the form of requests for documents (called “Requests for Production”) and written questions (called “interrogatories”). Documents requested are typically emails, text messages, contracts, financial information, phone records, medical records, or social media posts.
Given the allegations in Carano’s lawsuit–that Disney fired her because of her expression of political beliefs and that Disney treated male co-stars more favorably when they engaged in political expression–I would expect plenty of discovery into the written communications between the decisionmakers in Disney about the decision to fire her. Once the case advances, we may even get to see those communications if they are attached as exhibits to future motions filed by the parties.
Normally, once this early written discovery is complete, then the parties move towards depositions. A deposition takes place in a conference room with a court reporter present to transcribe the questions and answers of the witnesses and attorneys. Carano’s lawyers will have the chance to take the depositions of anyone over at Disney, including the higher ups. Carano has previously listed Pedro Pascal (the Mandalorian himself), Jon Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, and Bear Grylls, among others, as possible witnesses.
What the Next Steps in Discovery for Carano v. Disney?
Per the parties’ February 27th filing, they have already served and responded to interrogatories (written questions) and hundreds of document requests, which have resulted in the production of nearly ten thousand pages of documents, with more to come in the following weeks. No depositions have been taken yet, but the parties are still working out the scheduling of those depositions. Managing the schedules of numerous lawyers, parties, and witnesses can take quite awhile to get arranged. But it appears that the parties have identified at least twelve depositions that need to be taken.
To that end, the parties requested an additional 130 days in the scheduling order. The court had previously set the trial date for September 29, 2025, but with the proposed changes, that new trial date becomes February 19, 2026.
Even after fact discovery is complete in late August 2025, there will be plenty other filings that the parties will make. I’m sure Disney will file a motion for summary judgment, asking the court to dismiss all of Carano’s claims before it reaches trial. Normally the court would rule on that motion prior to setting a final trial, so even under this new schedule, there’s a decent chance that the February 2026 trial date for Carano v. Disney could be pushed, depending on the judge’s preferences.
Disney had previously file a motion to dismiss Carano’s lawsuit last summer, which the court denied in July 2024, but that motion was based solely on the allegations in the complaint and not on any other evidence. Summary judgment gets filed based on the documents and depositions and occurs much later in the case. Disney also filed another motion in August 2024 seeking to have the case put on pause while it appealed the denial of the motion to dismiss, but the court batted that motion aside in October 2024.
I would still expect to see some sort of motion to compel filed by one of the parties, which would allege that the other party is withholding evidence or documents, and that the court needs to get involved in the dispute and decide what needs to be produced. Other than that, the next substantive update will probably occur once a motion for summary judgment gets filed–assuming, of course, that the case doesn’t get settled before that. I’ll keep you all updated once that occurs.
