August 24, 2010
I am an attorney who has devoted his practice to representing investors in securities arbitrations. I am in favor of the revised discovery guide so long as investors also get the choice to resolve their disputes in court.
Ultimately, I believe that giving investors that option is the best way to improve the arbitration process because meaningful case law authority regarding discovery issues (as well as other legal issues) will be created. This authority will serve to provide additional guidance to the parties and arbitrators, which undoubtedly will lead to improve the discovery process in arbitration proceedings.
Simply put, FINRA should not be the only or even the primary forum to resolve securities disputes.
I specifically endorse the comments submitted on August 20, 2010 by Steven Caruso and Ryan Bakhtiari. I also agree though with many of criticisms made by Seth Lipner in his comment submitted on August 15th. The discovery guide is not perfect and it certainly can be improved. Specifically, the proposed revised discovery guide still puts too much of a burden on investors to produce documents that are not relevant to their respective case. I also think that the discovery guide carries too much weight with arbitrators and that its requirements are not right for all cases. This problem will only get worse by making certain types of documents presumtively discoverable.
Jason R. Doss
The Doss Firm, LLC
Marietta, Georgia