King v. Habib Bank Limited

Background

The plaintiffs sought an order requiring Habib Bank Limited (HBL) to produce complete data for “true positive” accounts, including images of paper checks kept at HBL’s branches and warehouses in Pakistan. The court had previously determined that complete account information—including originator, beneficiary, and payment-purpose information for thousands of transactions—was relevant and proportional under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The remaining dispute addressed the paper checks.

HBL argued that collecting images of a potentially large number of archived checks from 491 branches and five warehouses was not proportional to the needs of the case. HBL also raised concerns about weather conditions, estimated that collection could take 60 to 72 months, and stated that the proposed retrieval and production could take up to eight months and cost more than $4 million.

Court’s Analysis

Rule 26 permits discovery of nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense, subject to proportionality. The court considers the importance of the issues, the amount in controversy, the parties’ access to information and resources, the importance of the discovery, and whether the burden or expense outweighs the likely benefit.

The court concluded that the paper checks were clearly relevant because HBL had confirmed that they contained transaction data missing from its production. HBL was the only source of the complete information and had the ability to locate and retrieve the checks, despite the potential difficulties. The court determined that the importance of the information outweighed the production burden. It also noted that less burdensome methods, including sampling and rolling production, could reduce the cost and effort.

The court stated that monsoon conditions did not provide a complete defense to production, while recognizing that the parties could meet and confer about practical solutions and would not be expected to endanger anyone for discovery purposes.

Rulings

Judge Ona T. Wang granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel HBL to produce the paper checks. The parties were directed to meet and confer about the scope of production and were encouraged to consider rolling production or sampling across HBL’s branches and warehouses.

The court also addressed HBL’s request to allocate production costs among the parties. Because the scope of production was not yet certain and the cost-shifting analysis would depend on facts developed after production, the court denied that request as premature. The court stated that it could later consider cost shifting under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(5) if HBL did not propose ways to reduce the burden and the court had to intervene again.