(1) Sargent gave everyone a heads up that he was planning a 30(b)(6) deposition of WMI if the settlement didn't happen. It didn't and he and Susman immediately were true to their word. They see an opportunity and are pushing. They seem to be organized, with a plan, and re-energized.
(2) As Stockminer found by excellent research, this 30(b)(6) deposition is a new kind of legal animal (unique to federal rules of procedure, I think, and unfamiliar to me until now) which is like a hybrid between a deposition and interrogatories, intended to streamline the discovery process and cut out the game-playing that usually goes on under older rules.
With interrogatories, written questions can be put to an organization like a big corporation, and the corporation theoretically has an obligation to canvass all officers and employees to find the answers to the questions, and then reply with answers in writing, under oath. The problem is that this process takes a long time to complete. It's not unusual for several sets of interrogatories to be filed in an attempt to hone in on the issues. And there are so many ways to weasel out of direct answers, especially when lawyers are writing the answers and obfuscating by parsing the grammar of the questions, etc. and generally being evasive. This results in additional hearings for sanctions and motions to compel answers and other legal bullshit that pumps the attorney's billable hours but accomplishes little.
Depositions, on the other hand, involve live testimony of witnesses under oath being directly questioned (and pressed) by opposing lawyers. This process generally has more potential for quickly getting to the point, but is limited in that a witness can (and often does) claim not to have any personal knowledge of the facts that are the subject of inquiry. If all they can relate is hearsay, then follow up depositions of other corporate employees are needed to pin down facts, which is time-consuming and expensive.
A 30(b)(6) deposition, by contrast, requires the discovering party to designate a narrow subject matter area, and then requires the corporation in turn to designate a knowledgeable person (usually an executive, but potentially any employee) to familiarize himself/herself with the relevant facts and then testify on behalf of the corporation as to "corporate knowledge". It's designed to require the inclusiveness of answers to interrogatories with the immediacy of a deposition and to cut out the power of lawyers to obstruct and blow smoke. (I like it. Grin)
(3) So, before anyone gets too excited, this kind of deposition is not really filed "against" WMI, but is merely requiring WMI to designate a witness to answer questions on issues that may operate against the SNH's (or other creditors, so this could include UCC members) that may have benefited from insider knowledge when they traded in WMI securities. However, since there aren't many WMI employees left (no, BR can't/isn't going to be deposed), who will the designated hitter be? I confess I hope it will be "Mr. Omniscient", "Mr. Know-All", Mr. Kosturas, so that his encore performance can be thoroughly scrutinized by SG's crew. Grin
(4) Despite (3) above, this has to incrementally put more pressure on WGM and WMI to try to facilitate an new, more favorable settlement for equity. (I'm convinced they really want to settle this ASAP and get the hell out of it.) Add in the recent recalcitrance of the TPS group, and tactically BR could even use this as an opportunity "orchestrate" the deposition in a manner friendly to equity to help squeeze more out of the SNH's and maybe even JPM.