McClintock v. Valencia

Summary

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of California denied without prejudice a state prisoner’s motion to compel responses to requests for production of documents. The court held that the motion did not include defendants’ discovery responses and therefore did not permit evaluation of the asserted objections or deficiencies. The court ordered the parties to meet and confer, allowed plaintiff to renew the motion, extended the discovery deadline solely for that purpose, and stayed the pretrial motions deadline.

Holdings

1. A party moving to compel must provide the discovery requests at issue, the disputed responses, an explanation of why each response is deficient or each objection is unjustified, and facts establishing relevance to the claims or defenses. Because plaintiff did not provide defendants' responses, the court could not evaluate the asserted objections or determine whether further production was warranted.
2. The defendants' argument that plaintiff's motion was barred for failure to meet and confer was unavailing because the discovery and scheduling order provided that Local Rule 251 would not apply.
3. Discovery must be relevant to the discrete claims proceeding in the action and proportional to the needs of the case; plaintiff could not use discovery to expand the case beyond the claims identified by the district court.

Questions Presented

1. Whether plaintiff's motion to compel should be granted when he failed to provide defendants' discovery responses and identify the specific deficiencies or objections at issue.
2. Whether the motion was barred by the meet-and-confer requirement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(1).
3. Whether the requested discovery was sufficiently relevant and proportional to the claims proceeding in the action.

Disposition

other