Allison L. MacDonald v. Hasbro Managerial Services, LLC and Hasbro Inc.

Summary

The court partially granted and partially denied Plaintiff Allison L. MacDonald’s motion to compel discovery and denied her motion for sanctions in an employment discrimination and retaliation action against Hasbro Managerial Services, LLC and Hasbro Inc. The court ordered further negotiations and production concerning electronically stored information, employee and workplace records, interrogatory responses, and specified requests for production, while declining to waive privilege or impose sanctions.

Holdings

1. A proposed ESI search returning more than three million potentially responsive documents, with extraordinary review costs and delay, was not proportional to the needs of the case. The parties were required to renegotiate search terms using the agreed custodial and non-custodial sources and to produce responsive, nonprivileged documents under a mutually agreeable protocol.
2. Plaintiff was entitled to partial relief on numerous interrogatories and requests for production. Defendants were ordered to negotiate and run workable search terms, produce responsive nonprivileged documents, provide agreed information concerning retained and terminated employees when their HR systems became accessible, narrow certain pattern-and-practice requests to employees in plaintiff's department from 2019 through 2024, supplement specified interrogatory answers, identify certain individuals, provide an organizational chart or clarify that none exists, and provide privilege logs.
3. Defendants did not waive privilege objections merely because they had not yet identified privileged documents or produced a privilege log. The privilege issue was premature in light of the additional discovery ordered, but defendants were required to provide a privilege log for documents withheld thus far within 30 days and to accompany future productions with a privilege log.
4. Sanctions, expenses, and attorney fees were not warranted because responsibility for the delay in reaching workable search terms rested with both parties, and plaintiff's motion was granted only in part while being significantly limited in other respects.

Questions Presented

1. Whether defendants should be compelled to provide additional responses and production to specified interrogatories and requests for production.
2. Whether the parties should be required to renegotiate search terms and use search-term hit reports to create a workable and proportional ESI protocol.
3. Whether defendants waived privilege objections by not yet identifying withheld documents or producing a privilege log.
4. Whether plaintiff was entitled to sanctions, expenses, and attorney fees under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 26(g) and 37(a)(5), or 28 U.S.C. § 1927.

Disposition

other