§ 140A.051.Definitions

Six definitions for the investigative subchapter, and two of them do real work.

"Documentary material" runs through more than thirty listed items — paper, contract, book, brochure, catalog, notice, minutes, agenda, study, analysis, report, graph, map, chart, note, letter, telegram, telephone recordings, and data compilations stored in or accessible through computer or other information retrieval systems.

The last limb is the one that matters, and it carries a rider: data compilations come together with instructions and all other materials necessary to use or interpret them.

A database is useless without its schema. The definition takes the key with the lock.

"Accessible through" is broader than "stored in", and it reaches material a person can retrieve rather than only what sits on their own systems.

"Product of discovery" is the more unusual inclusion. It covers a deposition, interrogatory, document, thing, inspection result, examination or admission obtained by any method of discovery in a judicial or administrative proceeding of an adversarial nature — along with any digest, analysis, selection, compilation, or derivation of it, and any index, instruction, or other aid or means of access.

So the attorney general can demand what a person already gathered in someone else’s lawsuit, and the work product built on it.

The remaining three are narrower. A "racketeering investigation" asks whether a person is or has been engaged in or is actively preparing to engage in qualifying activity; a "racketeering violation" is an act or omission violating the chapter’s single prohibition; and "person" takes its meaning from the Code Construction Act.