Universal Orlando opponent sanctioned by court over discovery documents

The entire suit is stupid. You don't get to have any enforcement power on land you lost in foreclosure, especially when the restrictions were explicitly intended to benefit the original owner, who now owns it again. I'm pretty sure intent wins over any specific contract language.

While making no commentary about the stupidity of the suit, if opposing counsel says use a defined set of search terms, then you should use that set of search terms (and others). If you've advised opposing counsel that said proscribed search terms would yield a large result, of potentially non-responsive documents, you should have worked that out with counsel beforehand. To the extent that opposing counsel wasn't willing to budge,(i.e. We want everything with "Universal" in it), then dumping 40K documents on them is what is to be expected.

Now, realistically, they should have filtered them to weed out the non-responsive (not relevant to the issue at hand) items, but part of me giggles at the idea of dumping 40K documents, including spam, on opposing counsel. Yes, they were rightly smacked by the court, but having been on the wrong side of a HUGE document production demand, part of me beamed at the audacity of what they actually did.

Not pertaining to the suit, but... wow! How short-sighted was it to sell off all of that land?

I assume it was under the previous regime that was letting the parks stagnate, but still.

It was when Vivendi (and Seagrams/Bronfman before) owned the company and they had significant financial issues. Vivendi really was in deep doo-doo at the time, so there's a thought that they did what they had to do to salvage the company. Shortsighted yes, but alas, that's the world of corporate finance.

However, the old expression about buying land, "because they're not making any more of it" rings true. That original contiguous plot, abutting the OC Convention center, would have been spectacular to develop. Talk about green (well, brown) field. Also, if Florida could have approved gaming statewide, and not just tribal compact, the potential for an Integrated Resort on that plot would have been limitless. Imagine 2 parks, another CityWalk style complex, multiple hotels and golf courses, a Casino complex. Wow.

I would love to see those original plans for that spot. It's amazing that Goddard et al haven't leaked any of those over the years. Almost as if it's all on the shelf waiting to go. Obviously time has moved on, (Goddard certainly has, D'oh!). Volcano bay and the ramp up of the original UO complex I'm sure have forced some changes, so I'm curious what was drawn up that might still be "plug and play" versus complete re-evaluation. Ah, should be fun to watch