It's customary to have meritorious claims (i.e. those for which you have actual evidence) when you FILE the suit. Filing a suit and then asking the court to authorize a fishing expedition so you can try to find some evidence to back it up is strictly frowned upon.

T agree with the first two comments. The Franken motion is a common one and has the effct of preserving the issue for appeal. I doubt that his attorneys expected it to be granted but it would have been ineffective assistance of counsel not to offer a well-pleaded motion of this kind. As one of my law school professors said a few decades ago, "never try to handicap a court, but no lawyer follows that rule." I would have been shocked if it had been granted--this court knows that whatever they do there will be an appeal so they are going to do a thorough job in the hope that they will not have to do it ALL again if their decisions are overturned--they could act quickly if an appeal is successful. The denial of the Coleman motion is significant and is a strong indication (to handicap the court!) that this court will not tolerate any monkey business. Any dispassionate, close observor must agree that the process up to this point was exhaustive and fair. Coleman had his chance to try this during all the previous proceedings and chose not to. He is bound by the prevous record to which he did not raise these objections. Any other decision would have been a major surprise. It appears that this clears out the legal underbrush and now the court will focus on the real issues. I expect that the trial will go on longer than necessary so that they have an exhaustive record of the real factual issues for the inevitable appeal.