The case involves the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filing a lawsuit against an Oklahoma woman, Deborah Foster, in November 2004.

Foster was originally sued in November 2004 after someone using an IP address assigned to an Internet account in her name was discovered with a shared folder available on a file-sharing network.

The RIAA told Foster that she was liable for any infringement regardless of whether she had shared or downloaded files herself because she was the registered owner of the account.

[3] Challenged over the attorney costs she claimed as a result of what might have been considered a malicious prosecution,[4] Foster sought discovery of the RIAA's own legal rates as a comparative.

Despite the objection of the RIAA, the judge ruled that the rates should be produced, citing the legal precedent that "a party cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by his opponent in response".