Ingram v. All Am. Life, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107517 (M.D. Fla. May 15, 2026).
Proceeding pro se, the plaintiff in this TCPA case filed a motion to compel on four document requests aimed at the defendant insurance agency and its owners: call logs, outbound dialing reports, internal emails about the calls, and documents "showing any revenue generated from telemarketing."
Here's where that move fell apart. On the first three, the defendants said the records simply weren't theirs to hand over. The agency had hired a third-party lead-generation vendor to drum up consumer leads and inbound calls, and any responsive documents lived with that vendor. The Court didn't blink: it "cannot compel Defendants to produce documents that they do not have." A plaintiff, the Court added, "cannot overcome Defendants' response by simply arguing that documents should exist." Wishing a document into a defendant's filing cabinet is not, it turns out, a recognized discovery method.
The Court also noticed something awkward. The plaintiff had already told defense counsel he would "proceed with third-party discovery, including subpoenas to Certik Media, to obtain the records relating to the telemarketing campaign." So he knew where the good stuff was—and filed a motion to compel against the defendants anyway. The Court found it "unclear why Plaintiff filed this motion to compel rather than attempting to obtain the records" from the vendor directly.
Motion to compel denied.
But denial was not the end of the show. Under Federal Rule 37(a)(5)(B), when a motion to compel loses, the Court "must" make the movant "pay the party . . . who opposed the motion its reasonable expenses incurred in opposing the motion, including attorney's fees," unless the motion was substantially justified. So the Court ordered the plaintiff to show cause as to why he shouldn't cover the defendants' costs for beating back his motion. The would-be discovery win became a possible expensive bill.
Proceeding pro se might sound like a smart, thrifty idea to some people. But proceed with caution. Litigation is full of pitfalls, most of them aren't pretty, and some—as this plaintiff may be about to find out—are expensive.
Moral of the story: get a good lawyer.
