§ 2035.010.Persons permitted to obtain discovery; scope and restrictions

This section opens Chapter 19 and defines who may use it and why. Someone who has not yet filed a lawsuit, but reasonably expects to be a party to one, whether as plaintiff, defendant, or in some other role, may petition the court for permission to conduct discovery before the case exists. The discovery available is bounded by the same scope rules that govern discovery generally, and by the same restrictions that limit every discovery method, so this chapter does not open a broader door than an ordinary pending case would. The point of that early discovery is narrow: to perpetuate testimony, capturing what a witness would say now, in case memory fades or the witness becomes unavailable later, or to preserve evidence that might not survive until the case is finally filed.

Subdivision (b) draws a hard line around what this chapter is not for. It cannot be used to find out whether a cause of action or a defense even exists, and it cannot be used to figure out who might end up being sued or suing. Those are the jobs of ordinary investigation before filing a complaint, not of a court-supervised discovery petition. The distinction matters because a petitioner has to already know, going in, that a case is coming and roughly who the parties and facts will be; this chapter locks in evidence for a dispute already understood, it does not help a person decide whether to bring the dispute in the first place.