United States District Court, D. Kansas
LEORA RILEY, et al., Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs,
v.
PK MANAGEMENT, LLC, et al., Defendants.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
TERESA
J. JAMES, U.S. MAGISTRATE JUDGE
This
matter is before the Court on Plaintiffs' Motion to
Compel Discovery (ECF No. 126). Plaintiffs seek an order
compelling Defendants Aspen Companies Management, LLC (Aspen)
and Central Park Holdings, LLC (Holdings) to produce
documents responsive to Plaintiffs' Second Document
Requests Nos. 52, 60, and 64, and to answer Interrogatory
Nos. 15, 16, 18, and 19 of Plaintiffs' Second
Interrogatories. Aspen and Holdings jointly oppose the
motion. For the reasons set forth below, the Court will grant
the motion in part and deny it in part.
I.
Requested Discovery
Plaintiffs
served their Second Document Requests and Second
Interrogatories on Defendants Aspen and Holdings on December
7, 2018. In RFP No. 52 directed to Holdings, Plaintiffs
sought a copy of Holdings' LLC operating agreement. In
identical requests to Aspen and Holdings, Plaintiffs asked in
RFP No. 60 for a copy of all premises inventories Aspen and
Holdings had conducted on or after January 1, 2008. And in
RFP No. 64, Plaintiffs asked both Aspen and Holdings to
produce all Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) contracts
between each of them and the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) for Central Park Towers, and/or
between each of them and Plaintiffs Ozburn or Riley.
Although
Holdings produced its operating agreement in response to RFP
No. 52, it redacted the names of its members pursuant to
objection that their identities are irrelevant. In response
to RFP No. 60, Defendants objected on the basis that the
request is overbroad and beyond the scope of permissible
discovery, with the latter referring to their position that
discovery is bifurcated.[1] Defendants objected to RFP No. 64 on
the grounds it is overly broad, beyond the scope of limited
discovery (again referring to its bifurcation argument), and
that producing contracts for non-party tenants would disclose
financial arrangements with them.
Interrogatory
Nos. 15 and 16 seek, among other things, the compensation or
salary for each of Aspen's and Holdings' employees,
members, agents, owners, managers, and representatives who
visited Central Park Towers for any reason during the class
period, [2] and who worked at Central Park Towers on a
regular basis on or after January 1, 2008. Interrogatory No.
18 asked each Defendant to state the monthly rent it charged
for each apartment unit during the class period, and
Interrogatory No. 19 sought the total amount of rent it
received from class members for calendar years 2013 to the
present.
Defendants
objected to many subparagraphs of Interrogatory Nos. 15 and
16, but the only remaining subparagraphs at issue are those
calling for salary or compensation. Defendants objected that
the inquiry improperly seeks personnel information which is
currently beyond the scope of discovery at this stage (the
bifurcation argument), invades the individuals' privacy
rights, and could lead to embarrassment or annoyance. With
respect to Interrogatory Nos. 18 and 19, Defendants objected
they are overbroad as to time and call for speculation
because they call for information before Defendants owned the
property, [3] unduly burdensome, and premature.
Plaintiffs
conferred with Defendants, as required by Fed.R.Civ.P.
37(a)(1) and D. Kan.37.2, and Plaintiffs have timely filed
this motion.
II.
Legal Standard
Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) sets out the general scope
of discovery. As amended in 2015, it provides as follows:
Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged
matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense
and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the
importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount
in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant
information, the parties' resources, the importance of
the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden
or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely
benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not
be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.[4]
Considerations
of both relevance and proportionality now govern the scope of
discovery.[5] Relevance is still to be “construed
broadly to encompass any matter that bears on, or that
reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear
on” any party's claim or defense.[6] Information still
“need not be admissible in evidence to be
discoverable.”[7] The amendment deleted the
“reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of
admissible evidence” phrase, however, because it was
often misused to define the scope of discovery and had the
potential to “swallow any other
limitation.”[8]
The
consideration of proportionality is not new, as it has been
part of the federal rules since 1983.[9] Moving the proportionality
provisions to Rule 26 does not place on the party seeking
discovery the burden of addressing all proportionality
considerations. If a discovery dispute arises that requires
court intervention, the parties' responsibilities remain
the same as under the pre-amendment Rule.[10] In other
words, when the discovery sought appears relevant, the party
resisting discovery has the burden to establish the lack of
relevancy by demonstrating that the requested discovery (1)
does not come within the scope of relevancy as defined under
Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1), or (2) is of such marginal relevancy
that the potential harm occasioned by discovery would
outweigh the ordinary presumption in favor of broad
disclosure.[11]Conversely, when the relevancy of the
discovery request is not readily apparent on its face, the
party seeking the discovery has the burden to show the
relevancy of the request.[12] Relevancy determinations are
generally made on a case-by-case basis.[13]
III.
Analysis
The
Court considers in turn each of Plaintiffs' challenges to
Defendants' timely-asserted objections.
A.
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