Lacking Control: Why Subsidiaries (Mostly) Can't Produce A Parent's Information

Take enough visits to a school playground and eventually you will see two kids get into a fight. Maybe it is over something said, or maybe it is over the good basketball, or maybe it is a bully trying to steal another kid's lunch money.

But what if it was a bully trying to use the other kid to steal from their parents' bank account? Could that bully really expect the kid to be able to access their parents' accounts? That would have to be a really intimidating and sophisticated bully.

So it mostly goes in discovery in complex corporate civil litigation.

And like the schoolyard bully who can get money from a kid but cannot reach the kid's parents' accounts, a subsidiary likewise cannot (usually) be compelled to provide discovery from the parent corporation because the subsidiary lacks control of information possessed and controlled by the parent.