Chick-fil-A v. Ogden: Discovery Just Got Harder for Plaintiffs

On March 10, 2026, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued its opinion in Chick-fil-A, Inc. v. The Honorable Richard Ogden, 2026 OK 13, a case that arose from every parent's worst nightmare: a two-year-old child struck and killed by a vehicle in a fast-food drive-through lane. The underlying facts are tragic, but the legal question before the Supreme Court was procedural — and its answer carries consequences for every personal injury plaintiff in Oklahoma. The court assumed original jurisdiction, found that the trial judge abused his discretion, and issued a writ of prohibition blocking enforcement of a discovery order that required Chick-fil-A to produce records of pedestrian incidents at any of its restaurants nationwide.

The ruling did not touch the merits of the wrongful death claim itself. The parents' claims that Chick-fil-A's drive-through design created an unreasonably dangerous condition for pedestrians will still proceed to trial. But the decision establishes — or more precisely, reinforces — a significant limit on how broadly plaintiffs can cast their discovery nets under Oklahoma's amended discovery statute, 12 O.S. § 3226. For plaintiffs' attorneys and injury victims alike, understanding what this case actually holds — and what it does not — is essential to building effective cases going forward.

The Tragedy Behind the Case

On August 5, 2023, two-year-old I.P.L. was walking with his family toward the entrance of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Yukon, Oklahoma, when he was struck and killed by a vehicle in the drive-through lane. His parents, Leslie Lozada and Jesus Perez, filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against Chick-fil-A, Inc., alleging the company violated its nondelegable duty to provide reasonably safe premises for business invitees. At the core of their claim was a straightforward argument: Chick-fil-A's design for pedestrian access — which required customers to walk through or across one or more active drive-through lanes to enter the building — created an unreasonably dangerous condition that posed a foreseeable risk of harm.

The case against the driver of the vehicle was eventually dismissed. The franchisee, Scissor-Tailed Chicken, LLC, remains a party but did not participate in the Supreme Court proceedings. The discovery dispute — and the Supreme Court's intervention — centered entirely on what records Chick-fil-A, Inc. was required to produce about similar incidents at its other locations.

What the Parents Requested

The discovery dispute focused on two requests for production. In RFP No. 27, the parents sought documents and communications spanning a ten-year period related to any adverse events, complaints, incidents, or accidents involving injury or death at any Chick-fil-A restaurant in the United States. In RFP No. 36, they requested copies of all complaints or petitions filed against Chick-fil-A involving negligence allegations where a pedestrian was injured or killed after being struck by a vehicle on a Chick-fil-A premises.

At the hearing on a motion to compel, the parents acknowledged that RFP No. 27 was inadvertently overbroad and agreed to narrow it to incidents involving pedestrian injury or death in parking lots. They also agreed to limit the timeframe to five years. Chick-fil-A argued even this modified request swept in too much irrelevant information — that a trip-and-fall in a parking lot, for instance, had nothing in common with a child being struck by a car in a drive-through lane. Chick-fil-A proposed limiting discovery to incidents that were "substantially similar": situations where a customer parked, was forced to walk across the drive-through lane, and was injured by a vehicle in the process.

The trial court sided largely with the parents. It ordered Chick-fil-A to produce records concerning pedestrian incidents in the parking lots of any Chick-fil-A with a drive-through in the United States over the preceding five years. When Chick-fil-A asked whether the order could be limited to incidents occurring specifically in drive-through lanes, the court denied the request, finding that limitation too narrow and too hard to define.

What the Supreme Court Held

The Supreme Court reversed the trial court's discovery order, holding that the judge abused his discretion by not requiring the parents to demonstrate how the broad request was relevant to any party's actual claim or defense. The court did not say the underlying information was categorically off-limits. It said the trial court failed to apply the correct legal standard before compelling production.

The key statute is 12 O.S. § 3226(B)(1)(a), which was amended in 2017 to mirror Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as revised in 2015. Before those amendments, both the federal rule and the Oklahoma statute allowed discovery of "any matter relevant to the subject matter involved in the pending action." That language was intentionally removed. The current standard requires discovery to be "relevant to any party's claim or defense" and "proportional to the needs of the case." The court emphasized that this was not a cosmetic edit — it was a substantive narrowing of discovery scope designed to rein in requests that "sweep far beyond the claims and defenses of the parties" under the guise of subject-matter relevance.

The court acknowledged that records of pedestrian incidents at other Chick-fil-A locations "may be relevant to the subject matter involved here." But, the court wrote, "that is no longer the standard." Because the parents' request was overly broad on its face, the burden was on them to demonstrate its relevance to a specific claim or defense. The trial court's failure to require that showing constituted an abuse of discretion.

Why This Matters for Oklahoma Plaintiffs

The opinion matters because it applies with full force the narrowed discovery standard that has been on the books since 2017 but that many trial courts have been slow to enforce rigorously. The practical consequences for personal injury plaintiffs are significant.

Discovery is frequently the most important phase of a personal injury case. It is where plaintiffs obtain the evidence they need to prove negligence, demonstrate notice of dangerous conditions, and establish that a defendant's conduct fell below the standard of care. In premises liability cases — whether a slip and fall at a grocery store or a child struck in a drive-through — evidence of prior similar incidents is often the strongest proof that a defendant knew about a hazard and failed to fix it. If a Chick-fil-A in Texas had two pedestrian-vehicle collisions in its drive-through before the Yukon incident, that evidence would be devastating to Chick-fil-A's defense that the danger was unforeseeable. The question is whether the plaintiff can reach it.

After this opinion, the answer is still yes — but the plaintiff must do more work at the outset. A request for nationwide incident records will not survive scrutiny if it reads like a blanket demand for everything. The requesting party must articulate why the information sought is relevant to a specific claim or defense, not just to the general topic of the lawsuit. The court's opinion practically invites the parents to refile a more focused motion to compel — it "authorized [the trial court] to reevaluate Parents' motion to compel discovery with respect to RFP Nos. 27 and 36 in a manner consistent with this opinion." The door is not closed. It simply requires a more precise key.

The Proportionality Standard in Practice

The 2017 amendment to § 3226 did more than just replace "subject matter" with "claim or defense." It elevated proportionality from a limitation buried in a subsection to a core element of the discovery scope itself. Courts must now consider the importance of the issues at stake, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.

In a wrongful death case involving a two-year-old, the "importance of the issues at stake" and "amount in controversy" factors weigh heavily in favor of broad discovery. But proportionality cuts both ways. A demand for all pedestrian incidents at thousands of restaurants across 47 states imposes an enormous production burden, and if most of those incidents involve circumstances nothing like the one at issue — a pedestrian tripping over a curb in a parking lot, for instance — the burden may outweigh the benefit. The court did not foreclose nationwide discovery; it required the requesting party to justify it. A request for nationwide records of incidents specifically involving vehicles striking pedestrians in or near drive-through lanes would be far more defensible than a request for any pedestrian incident of any kind.

Plaintiffs' attorneys should treat the proportionality analysis as a requirement to be met affirmatively, not a defense to be rebutted. When drafting discovery requests, connecting each one to a specific element of a claim or defense — and being prepared to explain that connection in a brief or at a hearing — is no longer optional. It is the baseline standard.

What This Does Not Change

It is important to recognize what the opinion does not do. It does not eliminate a plaintiff's right to discover evidence of prior similar incidents. The federal Advisory Committee notes that the court cited specifically identify "other incidents of the same type" as an example of information that, "suitably focused," would be relevant to a party's claims or defenses. The court was not saying that prior incident evidence is irrelevant. It was saying that the request in this case was not sufficiently focused to justify compelling production without the requesting party first demonstrating relevance.

The opinion also does not change the substantive law of premises liability in Oklahoma. A business owner's nondelegable duty to maintain reasonably safe premises, the foreseeability analysis for determining whether a dangerous condition was actionable, and the plaintiff's right to prove notice through prior incidents all remain intact. The parents' underlying wrongful death claim against Chick-fil-A proceeds. If they can establish that Chick-fil-A knew or should have known that its drive-through design was dangerous — through redesigned discovery requests, corporate testimony, internal communications, or other evidence — the case has the potential to be powerful.

And critically, the opinion does not hold that discovery must be limited to the exact same location. Footnote 2 of the opinion notes that RFP No. 36 — the request for copies of lawsuits involving pedestrians struck by vehicles — was "not overly broad as drafted." It was the trial court's expansion of that request to include any pedestrian injury or death, removing the limitation to motor-vehicle-involved incidents, that triggered the overbreadth problem. A request for reports of vehicle-pedestrian collisions in Chick-fil-A drive-throughs nationwide would likely survive scrutiny, particularly if accompanied by a showing that Chick-fil-A uses a standard drive-through design across its franchise system.

How Plaintiffs Should Adapt

The lesson of this case is not that discovery is shrinking — it is that discovery requires more precision. For plaintiffs' attorneys handling premises liability cases, product liability cases, or any matter where prior similar incidents are critical, several practical adjustments are warranted.

Requests should be drafted with specificity from the outset, tying each request to a particular element of the claim — foreseeability, notice, defective design, or failure to warn. Rather than requesting everything and narrowing later, the first request should be narrow enough to withstand a motion for protective order while still capturing the evidence needed. When broader discovery is justified, the request should be accompanied by a brief explanation of why the scope is necessary, citing the proportionality factors and explaining how each factor supports the request.

In cases involving national chains or franchisors, plaintiffs should consider phased discovery — starting with corporate-level information about design standards, safety audits, and incident-reporting systems before requesting location-specific incident reports. If corporate discovery reveals a standardized design and a centralized incident-tracking system, the case for nationwide production of specific types of incidents becomes much stronger because the plaintiff can demonstrate both relevance and accessibility.

It is also worth noting that the proportionality factors include "the parties' relative access to relevant information." In a case against a franchisor like Chick-fil-A, the plaintiff has no access to internal incident data whatsoever. The defendant controls all of it. Courts applying the proportionality analysis should and do weigh that asymmetry, and plaintiffs challenging restrictive discovery rulings should emphasize it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Oklahoma Supreme Court decide in the Chick-fil-A case?

The court held that the trial judge abused his discretion by not requiring the plaintiffs to demonstrate how their broad discovery requests were relevant to a specific claim or defense. The court issued a writ of prohibition blocking enforcement of the discovery order and sent the issue back to the trial court for reevaluation under the correct standard.

Does this ruling mean I can't get evidence of prior incidents at other locations?

No. The court specifically recognized that "other incidents of the same type" can be relevant discovery. The ruling requires plaintiffs to tailor their requests and demonstrate why the evidence sought is relevant to a specific claim or defense — not just to the general subject matter of the lawsuit.

What is the difference between "subject matter" relevance and "claim or defense" relevance?

Before 2017, Oklahoma's discovery statute allowed parties to seek information relevant to the "subject matter" of the lawsuit, which courts interpreted broadly. The 2017 amendment to 12 O.S. § 3226 narrowed that standard, requiring discovery to be relevant to a party's actual "claim or defense." The change was designed to prevent discovery requests that sweep far beyond the specific legal theories in the case.

What is the "proportionality" requirement in Oklahoma discovery?

Under § 3226(B)(1)(a), discovery must be proportional to the needs of the case. Courts consider the importance of the issues, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense outweighs the likely benefit.

Does this ruling affect the underlying wrongful death lawsuit?

No. The Supreme Court's opinion addressed only the scope of discovery. The parents' negligence and wrongful death claims against Chick-fil-A — alleging that the drive-through design created an unreasonably dangerous condition for pedestrians — remain pending and will proceed to trial.

How should plaintiffs draft discovery requests after this ruling?

Plaintiffs should tie each request to a specific element of their claims, use precise language describing the type of incidents sought, be prepared to explain the relevance of each request at a hearing, and consider phased discovery that starts with corporate-level information before requesting location-specific data. Broad requests are not prohibited, but they must be justified.

Can a premises liability plaintiff still prove a property was dangerous?

Absolutely. Oklahoma premises liability law still requires property owners to maintain reasonably safe conditions for invitees. Plaintiffs can prove foreseeability and notice through prior incidents, internal safety audits, design documents, employee testimony, and other evidence. This ruling affects how discovery requests must be framed — not whether the underlying evidence is available.