Brett Favre is accused of withholding text messages in Mississippi welfare litigation

Brett Favre tried his damnedest to get the civil lawsuit filed against him regarding the Mississippi welfare scandal to be dismissed. Now that the highest court in the state has rejected Favre’s effort to throw out the claim, Favre faces an effort by the Mississippi Department of Human Services to track down the truth, whatever it might be.

Via A.J. Perez of FrontOfficeSports.com, the MDHS has accused Favre of failing to comply with discovery requests aimed at obtaining text messages relevant to the case.

The MDHS alleged in a Monday filing that Favre “failed to answer any of this discovery” regarding text messages exchanged with others in the alleged welfare-fund scam.

“Despite being identified as the sender or recipient on the face of these text messages, Favre objected and claimed he could not verify many of these text messages’ authenticity,” MDHS argued in its 14-page document.

Discovery is a normal part of any civil litigation. It’s how the parties secure evidence they will use, and it’s how they become aware of evidence they might have to counter. The MDHS contends that the various defendants in the case have produced more than 330,000 documents to date — but that Favre has produced a mere 24.

He is specifically accused of failing to surrender text messages. In many cases, text messages are incredibly useful to the effort at discerning the truth. People tend to be less guarded in such communications, not realizing that they are saved, that they can be obtained, and that they can be potent evidence.

Disputes over the scope of discovery requests and the sufficiency of responses are very common in civil cases. Judges prefer it when the lawyers work out their issues without the court being involved. Often, such motions get the judge pissed off at one side or the other. Sometimes, the judge ends up pissed off at everybody.