Khardy Enterprises LLC, et al. v. NCR Atelos Corporation, et al.

Summary

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan denies defendants’ motion to compel discovery responses in Khardy Enterprises LLC v. NCR Atelos Corporation. The court finds that defendants failed to adequately show the relevance and proportionality of the disputed discovery requests and that several requests were overly broad or insufficiently particularized.

Holdings

1. The motion to compel was denied because defendants failed to comply with the court's repeated orders requiring a joint list that addressed the relevance and proportionality of each disputed discovery request.
2. A party moving to compel must show that the requested information is relevant to a specific claim or defense and must address the proportionality factors; conclusory assertions that discovery is necessary and proportional are insufficient.
3. Absent credible evidence that additional responsive documents exist or existed and were destroyed, plaintiffs' signed discovery responses and representation that they had produced all documents in their possession, custody, or control were sufficient to defeat the motion to compel.
4. Requests for production that are unlimited in subject matter or time, or that require the responding party to guess whether documents are responsive, do not satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(1)(A).

Questions Presented

1. Whether defendants were entitled to an order compelling plaintiffs to provide further responses to the disputed interrogatories and requests for production.
2. Whether defendants satisfied their burden under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) to show that the requested discovery was relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.
3. Whether plaintiffs' discovery responses and representations that no additional responsive documents existed were sufficient to defeat the motion to compel.

Disposition

denied