A Superior Court judge indicated this week that he’s inclined to allow more wide-ranging depositions to take place than MIT would prefer in a lawsuit brought by a former researcher on the now-defunct OpenAg project.

Babak Babakinejad claimed in an August 2021 lawsuit against the university that his research appointment at the MIT Media Lab was unjustly terminated after he blew the whistle on misrepresentations of research regarding so-called “food computers” — technology-enabled growing boxes intended to help automate agriculture. The project was shut down in early 2020 after media reports in the New York Times and elsewhere seemed to confirm that research was misrepresented. The story was largely overshadowed, however, both by MIT’s scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, and the start of the Covid pandemic.

Babakinejad claims that the university was reluctant to shut down the OpenAg project even after he told top university officials about the misrepresentions as early as 2018 because it was held up as a success for the university's fundraising efforts. MIT has never publicly addressed the claims about the research nor the fundraising.

The lawsuit was prominently featured in a cover story in the Boston Business Journal in August 2022.

In a hearing Monday, Babakinejad, who is seeking a lawyer but currently representing himself in the lawsuit, argued before Suffolk Superior Court Justice David A. Deakin regarding the scope of discovery in the case. In February 2022, Babakinejad...

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