Siemens Industry, Inc. v. Great Midwest Insurance Company
- Stewart Aaron
- 1:23-cv-05046
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Siemens v. Great Midwest Insurance, Magistrate Judge Aaron granted in part and denied in part GMIC’s motion to compel Siemens to produce discovery documents.
Siemens must produce the specified nonprivileged documents by June 21, 2024; GMIC receives only the discovery the court identified, while its broader motion to compel was denied in part.
What happened
In Siemens Industry, Inc. v. Great Midwest Insurance Company, Great Midwest Insurance Company asked the court to require Siemens to produce documents requested during four depositions. The requests came near or after the fact-discovery deadline, which had been extended only for limited deposition purposes.
The court said Great Midwest had not acted diligently and that many requests were untimely. It also said an earlier order allowing limited additional depositions did not authorize new document requests. Even so, the court found that proportionality justified requiring Siemens to produce some documents.
Judge Stewart D. Aaron granted in part and denied in part Great Midwest’s motion to compel. Siemens must produce nonprivileged documents responsive to 20 compromise requests, eight additional requests, certain documents it plans to use at trial, and documents needed to correct materially incomplete earlier responses, by June 21, 2024.
The detailed version
- Siemens Industry, Inc. v. Great Midwest Insurance Company · No. 1:23-cv-05046
- Stewart Aaron
- June 4, 2024
Background
Great Midwest Insurance Company (GMIC), the defendant and counterclaimant, filed the remaining portion of a letter motion asking the court to compel Siemens Industry, Inc. (Siemens), the plaintiff and counter-defendant, to produce documents requested during depositions of four Siemens witnesses. Siemens had already produced documents responsive to 14 requests; the opinion states that 88 requests remained in dispute.
The fact-discovery deadline was initially January 17, 2024, and was later extended to April 17, 2024. The December 26 extension order stated that the deadline would not be extended again absent extraordinary circumstances. On April 25, 2024, the court extended discovery to May 24 for two limited purposes: seven additional hours of testimony from Siemens’s designated witness under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6), limited to documents produced on April 12, and a three-hour deposition of Steven R. Shamash concerning relevant, nonprivileged matters.
GMIC made document requests during or after depositions conducted on April 15, April 17, May 21, and May 23, 2024. It then filed its motion to compel on May 23. The court reviewed the parties’ submissions and the deposition transcripts underlying the requests.
Legal standards
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 permits discovery of nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Rule 34 generally gives the recipient 30 days to respond to a document request, object, and produce responsive documents. Rule 37 allows a party to seek an order compelling discovery when the other party fails to produce documents.
The court explained that discovery requests generally must be served early enough for the response period to end before discovery closes. Under the scheduling rules, a deadline may be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s consent. The primary consideration in determining diligence is whether the party seeking additional discovery acted diligently.
Court’s reasoning
The court found that GMIC had not been diligent. Judge Rearden had warned that the fact-discovery deadline would not be extended absent extraordinary circumstances, yet GMIC scheduled its first depositions immediately before the deadline. GMIC had served its first document requests on November 6, 2023, but waited five months to inquire about them during depositions in mid-April.
The court also held that its April 25 order allowing limited additional deposition testimony was not an invitation for GMIC to make additional document requests. Because GMIC had not timely served the requests and had not acted diligently, the motion could have been denied entirely. Nevertheless, considering proportionality, the court exercised its discretion to require production of certain documents.
Ruling
The court ordered Siemens to produce nonprivileged documents, if any, responsive to:
- Twenty requests GMIC offered as a compromise: - April 16, 2024 Request Nos. 8–9, 12–13, 31, 34, 38, and 42; - April 19, 2024 Request Nos. 5, 9, 10, 21–22, and 24; - May 21, 2024 Request No. 1; and - May 23, 2024 Request Nos. 3, 8–9, 14–15.
- Eight additional requests: - April 16, 2024 Request Nos. 3, 17, 28, 29, and 57; and - May 23, 2024 Request Nos. 10–12.
- Any documents responsive to requests covered by GMIC’s motion that Siemens intends to use at trial, as required by Siemens’s duty to supplement its disclosures under Rule 26(e).
- Any documents Siemens learned had not been produced in response to GMIC’s first set of document requests, if that omission made Siemens’s earlier responses materially incomplete.
For April 16, 2024 Request No. 57, the court limited Siemens’s obligation to produce backup documents to those already gathered and maintained by Siemens in a separate folder or file. The court stated that GMIC’s letter motion was “GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART” and ordered Siemens to produce the specified documents no later than June 21, 2024.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.