In re: Virginia Black

Summary

The Vermont Superior Court, Civil Division, Washington Unit, partially grants and partially denies a motion for a protective order concerning discovery in an appeal from a Probate Division decision awarding former guardian fees. The court holds that attorney notes, attorney-drafted materials, and litigation-related materials are protected work product, while potentially responsive recordings, emails, papers, and letters must be produced or addressed through a supplemental motion. The court denies a request requiring counsel to prepare meeting summaries, orders a discovery conference, and stays other discovery pending that conference.

Holdings

1. Attorney notes, attorney-drafted materials, and materials created for litigation are protected by the work-product doctrine under Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4) and need not be produced.
2. Recordings, emails, papers, and letters concerning the six identified meetings and billing dates were potentially relevant to the appeal and were not excluded from discovery on relevance grounds.
3. The request was sufficiently particularized as to phone calls, emails, meetings, conference calls, papers, letters, and notes for the six specified dates, but the phrases "etc." and "this list is not exhaustive" were insufficiently particularized and could not be enforced.
4. Rule 34 does not require a party to create a record or modify an existing record in response to a request for production.
5. The request that attorney Gallitano create written summaries of meetings for which no recording existed was denied because it would require creation of attorney work product.
6. The court could set a discovery conference to establish the reasonable size and scope of discovery and stay further discovery pending that conference, while leaving Gallitano's specified production or supplementation obligation in effect.

Questions Presented

1. Whether attorney notes and other attorney-drafted or litigation-created materials responsive to the discovery requests were protected by the work-product doctrine under Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4).
2. Whether the requested recordings, emails, papers, and letters were relevant to the appeal concerning the reasonableness and documentary support for the former guardian's fees.
3. Whether the discovery requests were sufficiently particularized under Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 34.
4. Whether the court could require production of nonprivileged materials or supplementation of the protective-order motion while setting a discovery conference to address proportionality and scope.
5. Whether attorney Gallitano could be required to create written summaries of meetings for which no recording existed.

Disposition

other