Great American Insurance Company v. Gemstone Property Management, LLC

Background

Great American Insurance Company moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 to compel non-party Subin Associates to produce documents responsive to a January 30, 2025 subpoena. Subin opposed the motion and moved to quash, meaning to cancel, the subpoena.

The subpoena sought documents related to Great American’s allegations that Luis Manuel Garcia Salcedo, Subin, and a doctor made material misrepresentations or concealed information in an underlying personal-injury lawsuit. Subin had represented Salcedo in that lawsuit. The requests included documents exchanged or received during discovery, litigation-funding agreements, medical-evaluation documents, and documents concerning referral sources.

Court’s Analysis

The court found that the subpoena sought relevant documents and provided a reasonable time for compliance. It also found that Subin had not shown that compliance would impose an undue burden or significant cost.

Subin used substantially identical boilerplate objections for each of the 28 document requests, asserting that the requests were vague, overly broad, burdensome, irrelevant, confidential, and potentially privileged. The court held that the objections were improper because they were not supported by particularized facts. As a result, Subin waived all objections except those based on attorney-client privilege and the attorney work product doctrine, which protects certain materials prepared for litigation.

The court rejected Great American’s argument that Subin had already waived attorney-client privilege by failing to provide a privilege log. It also rejected Subin’s blanket assertion of privilege. The court stated that discovery documents, litigation-funding agreements, and referral-source documents were not privileged. It found that other documents might be protected and that it was premature to decide whether the crime-fraud exception applied.

Ruling

The court granted Great American’s motion to compel as set forth in the order and denied Subin’s motion to quash. Subin must produce all documents not protected by attorney-client privilege or attorney work product by March 24, 2025. For every document withheld on either ground, Subin must provide an itemized privilege log on the same date.

The court also denied Subin’s request that Great American pay the costs of compliance because Subin had not shown that compliance would involve significant expense.