Discovery can be a very long and difficult process with Diamond Comic Distributors, its trustee Morgan W. Fisher, and Alliance Entertainment are all figuring out with new dates now approved by the court. In March 2026, a schedule was put in place regarding a lawsuit between Diamond and Alliance Entertainment spinning out of Alliance’s abandoned bid to purchase Diamond’s assets during the chapter 11 process as well as the counterclaims. In April 2025, Alliance Entertainment submitted a complaint against Diamond accusing Diamond of “fraud” and “deception” as far as their relationship with Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Magic: The Gathering.

Part of that schedule is what’s known as “discovery,” the process of exchanging documents such as emails, text messages, instant messages, basically communication and documents, that have to deal with the case. Each side then goes through the documents to find the ones relevant to the case and they can present that during the court hearing. It can involve millions of documents and be a difficult and long process. Often, lawyers outsource this to companies whose entire business is “e-discovery,” going through those documents and tagging the relevant ones and moving on from those that aren’t.

In late August, the parties submitted a filing stating that this is a “document-intensive case” and the parties have been working in good faith to make the process as easy as possible. One such example is agreeing upon search terms to more easily sort through documents. They state there’s “hundreds of thousands” of documents that are relevant to the discovery request.

The parties have worked diligently to review documents, refine their respective proposed search terms, and balance the needs of this case against the burden of searching through scores of non-responsive and irrelevant documents.

Basically, it can be a labor intensive, pain in the ass process, and they’re struggling.

The parties in their filing asked for dates to be shifted giving more time to prepare for the case and in particular discovery. The delays are about 3 to 6 months for each step with a hearing that was set for February 2027 shifted to July 2027.

Below ae the new dates for each step:

Event	Current Deadline	Proposed Deadline
Substantial Document Completion Deadline	August 31, 2026	November 27, 2026
Fact Discovery Deadline	October 31, 2026	February 26, 2027
Deadline for Dispositive PreTrial Motions	November 30, 2026	April 15, 2027
Deadline for Responses to Dispositive Motions	December 30, 2026	May 21, 2027
Deadline for Replies IFSO Dispositive Motions	January 13, 2027	June 18, 2027
Dispositive Motions Hearing	February 17, 2027	July 14, 2027

You can read the court filings below: