Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses
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24CV102883: AMICUCCI vs JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., et al. 07/02/2026 Hearing on Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses filed by Mary Amicucci (Plaintiff) CRS# 914941697451 in Department 20
Tentative Ruling - 07/02/2026 Karin Schwartz
The Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses filed by Mary Amicucci on 01/16/2026 is Granted in Part.
SUPPLEMENTAL ORDER GRANTING IN PART PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO COMPEL FURTHER RESPONSES AND PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS (RPD NOS. 5557 AND 59)
I.
Background
This is an employment dispute. Plaintiff Mary Amicucci ("Amicucci") alleges that, after John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ("JWS") offered her the position of Senior Vice President, Learning, she disclosed proprietary insights, strategies, and recommendations to JWS Chairman Jesse Wiley and Interim CEO Matthew Kissner during two meetings on October 13 and 16, 2023, after which JWS rescinded the offer and used her contributions. Amicucci does not assert misappropriation of a trade secret.
On April 2, 2026, the Court heard Amicucci's motion to compel further responses to Requests for Production ("RPD") Nos. 55, 56, 57, 58, and 59. The Court continued the hearing as to those requests and directed supplemental briefing on the scope of the proprietary information Amicucci contends she conveyed, in light of her deposition testimony.
On May 20, 2026, the Court denied RPD No. 58 as overbroad and, as to RPD Nos. 5557 and 59, directed the parties to meet and confer on reasonable parameters for four categories of production and to submit further briefing if they could not agree. The parties did not reach agreement, and each submitted a second supplemental brief.
The Court has reviewed the second supplemental briefs, the Declaration of R. Scott Erlewine and exhibits, the Declaration of Kelsey F. Morris and the deposition excerpts attached as Exhibit A, and the matters of which judicial notice was requested. This supplemental order resolves the four categories carved out of the April 2, 2026 order, as supplemented by the May 20, 2026 order.
II. Governing standard Discovery is permitted as to any matter relevant to the subject matter that is itself admissible or reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. As the Court held on May 20, 2026, although Amicucci is entitled to cast a wide net, her requests must be reasonably tethered to the proprietary information she alleges she communicated to Defendants. The rulings below tether each category to Amicucci's own account of what she conveyed, as reflected in her deposition testimony and discovery responses, and impose a staged, one-year initial timeframe consistent with that principle. 24CV102883: AMICUCCI vs JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., et al. 07/02/2026 Hearing on Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses filed by Mary Amicucci (Plaintiff) CRS# 914941697451 in Department 20 III.
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Rulings on the four categories The time period for each of the following is discussed in Part IV below.
Category 1 Use of AI to catalog For Dummies book titles Production shall be made of documents concerning JWS's use of AI to catalog its book titles for the For Dummies series during the time period described below. Because both parties accept the category as written and limited, it is adopted without modification.
Category 2 Use of AI to analyze production workflows for the For Dummies series Production shall be made of documents concerning JWS's use of AI to analyze production workflows for the For Dummies series to identify potential increased production efficiencies, including but not limited to the templatization of editorial workflows, for the time period limited below.
This category is grounded in Amicucci's deposition testimony. She testified that she recommended JWS "create a unique content pipeline" that would pull the production, title selection, and ideation of trend-driven books out of "the production engine that serves all the other titles" in the For Dummies series, including "elevating editors" and "proactively finding topics that were of the moment, with lasting value, which would need to be analyzed through the data." (Amicucci Depo., Vol 2, p. 335.) The parties agree this category should be compelled. Because it appears that both parties accept the category as written, it is adopted without modification.
Category 3 Licensing For Dummies content to AI large-language-model companies Production shall be made of documents concerning JWS's strategy to license For Dummies content to large-language-model ("LLM") companies, including documents reflecting the conception, evaluation, negotiation, and implementation of such a licensing strategy (the "$44 million AI content licensing deal" publicly announced by JWS being one non-exclusive example). Company-specific documents i.e., documents concerning a particular LLM company need not be produced unless that company was identified by Amicucci or otherwise falls within the scope of her disclosures. Strategy documents are responsive without regard to whether a specific company is named.
This modification is dictated by Amicucci's own testimony. Asked whether she recommended "a particular form of AI", she answered "No," and explained that licensing JWS content to LLM companies "would be about partnerships with" such companies; she expressly stated she "didn't recommend the specific companies that should be looked at," recalling only that "Anthropic, ChatGPT and Claude" were the principal LLM companies then operating. (Amicucci Depo., Vol 2, p. 365.) She apparently also testified, and contends, that Wiley told her JWS "had not begun our thinking on AI" and that she supplied the licensing strategy in response. (See Plaintiffs Second Supplemental Response, dated 6/10/26, at p. 4, and citations therein.)
Because Amicucci conveyed the licensing strategy but did not identify specific counterparties or the $44 million transaction, documents reflecting that strategy bear a reasonable nexus to her claims, while
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF ALAMEDA
24CV102883: AMICUCCI vs JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., et al. 07/02/2026 Hearing on Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses filed by Mary Amicucci (Plaintiff) CRS# 914941697451 in Department 20 documents specific to an individual LLM company she did not identify do not except where the company falls within the scope of her disclosures. This category is subject to the one-year initial timeframe set out below.
Category 4 Character and story For Dummies guides around entertainment properties Production shall be made of documents concerning JWS's development of immersive character or world-building For Dummies guides built around entertainment-media properties of the type Amicucci described i.e., fan-oriented guides to fictional characters and worlds created on or after October 13, 2023.
This formulation conforms the category to the recommendation Amicucci made and to the Court's prior observation that this category may need to be narrowed to characters of the type or kind she suggested in her meetings. Amicucci testified that, during the October 2023 "Barbenheimer" period, she recommended that JWS explore, in the For Dummies series, "character guides for people who want to immerse themselves in the world," using Barbie as the entertainment-media example. (Amicucci Depo., Vol 2, p. 333.) She maintains her insight was for "entertainment properties in general", with Barbie and Oppenheimer offered as examples that were "top of mind", not the exclusive universe. The category captures that concept and is not confined to the two specific titles Defendants identify.
(a) Major world events strand excluded. Defendants need not produce documents concerning a "major world events" or hard-news For Dummies series (e.g., the Oppenheimer/atomic-bomb and "Middle East Conflict" examples). (Amicucci Depo., Vol 2, p. 334.) The record establishes that JWS published For Dummies titles premised on world events for years before the October 2023 meetings including U.S. History For Dummies (2001) and World History For Dummies (2001) so production on this strand is not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence on whether JWS used Amicucci's contributions. (See Morris Decl. in support of Second Supplemental, Ex. B.)
(b) Marvel partnership limited Stage 1 production. The Court declines to require production of every document relating to a JWSMarvel partnership. Amicucci did not identify Marvel in her disclosures. (Defendants Second Supplemental Brief, p. 5.) Accordingly, as Stage 1, Defendants shall produce only internal JWS documents demonstrating the origination and development, within JWS, of the idea for the Marvel partnership i.e., documents reflecting the internal conception and development of that idea leading up to the execution of any agreement and need not, at this stage, produce the universe of documents relating to the partnership or its performance.
IV. Timeframe and staged discovery For categories one through three, the initial relevant time period is October 13, 2023 through October 12, 2024 one year from Amicucci's first meeting as the first stage of staged discovery. This staged approach is consistent with the principle that the further removed a JWS business decision is from Amicucci's October 2023 disclosures, the less likely it originated with
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA COUNTY OF ALAMEDA
24CV102883: AMICUCCI vs JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., et al. 07/02/2026 Hearing on Motion to Compel Further Discovery Responses filed by Mary Amicucci (Plaintiff) CRS# 914941697451 in Department 20 her, while preserving her ability to seek a broader period on an appropriate showing. For category four, the initial relevant time period is October 13, 2023 through January 9, 2024 (i.e., the date of the Dolan article).
This ruling is without prejudice to a further motion by Amicucci, after the Stage 1 production, to extend the timeframe (and, where warranted, to expand the Marvel production beyond internal origination-and-development documents). The public datapoints Amicucci has identified may support a prompt Stage extension: in particular, JWS's Earnings Review Presentation dated September 4, 2025 as to Categories 2 and 3, and the January 9, 2025 reference to the Marvel partnership in the Eileen Dolan article as to Category 4, may support extension of the period for the corresponding categories upon a showing that JWS implemented or used Amicucci's contributions during the Stage 1 period.
V. Orders As to RPD Nos. 5557 and 59, Plaintiff's motion to compel is GRANTED IN PART consistent with Categories 14 as set forth in Section III above.
Production for all four categories is limited, in the first instance, to the period October 13, 2023 through October 12, 2024, as Stage 1 of staged discovery, without prejudice to a further motion as set forth in Section IV. Defendants' responses are due on or before July 23, 2026, with documents to be produced no later than August 3, 2026. Defendants shall provide a codecompliant privilege log.
Defendants shall serve further verified responses and produce responsive, non-privileged documents within the limits set above. Documents withheld on any privilege shall be identified in a privilege log, and documents produced shall comply with the operative protective order.
The "major world events"/hard-news strand within Category 4 is excluded from Defendants' production obligations.
IT IS SO ORDERED.