Potential strategy snapshot: how Owens can gain ground (without out-spending)
- Make Nardello’s file the fulcrum: Precisely tailored third-party discovery aimed at methodology, sourcing, and communications—followed by targeted motions (to compel, to exclude) if necessary.
- Sequence depositions for maximum yield: Consider deposing investigators to lock in underlying facts and expose gaps.
- Exploit any method missteps: If evidence was collected via pretexting for financial data, unlawful recording, or intrusion, Owens could conceivably move to exclude and seek sanctions—turning the process into leverage.
- Control costs with sharp scoping: Narrow custodians, date ranges, and topics; demand detailed privilege logs for PI materials.
- Forum and motion practice: Monitor anti-SLAPP developments (if UPEPA becomes law) and be ready with cross-motions or protective orders that use those mechanisms.
Bottom line
The Macrons’ use of Nardello & Co. signals a well-financed, investigator-driven discovery strategy built to win both in court and in the court of public opinion.
Barring a dramatic shift—such as Delaware’s proposed anti-SLAPP overhaul becoming law and arming the defense with early-dismissal tools—Owens is marching into a discovery war she cannot outspend, and the strain is already visible in her own public acknowledgments of the case’s toll on her and her family.
The plaintiffs’ investigator-driven narrative is tightening, the forum is set, and each motion, subpoena, and deposition compounds the asymmetry. There are strategic levers still available to Owens—surgical third-party discovery, privilege fights, and evidentiary challenges—but at this early-stage of the litigation, Owens’ armor is already showing cracks, not reinforcements. If the trajectory holds and no leverage-shifting event intervenes, the litigation’s burn rate and evidentiary pressure won’t just bruise her case—they will, sooner rather than later, become the engine of her financial ruin.
🛑 It should be noted that the assertions in Macron et al. v. Owens are merely allegations and have not been proven in a court of law.
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