Saechao v. Western Dental Services, Inc.
- Beth Freeman
- 5:24-cv-01681
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 10
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate.
In Saechao v. Western Dental Services, Inc., Magistrate Judge DeMarchi ordered additional discovery about the plaintiff’s disability-access claims.
Sou Saechao and Western Dental Services, Inc.; the order requires Western Dental to produce additional discovery and permits Saechao to take a limited further deposition.
What happened
In Saechao v. Western Dental Services, Inc., Sou Saechao alleged that Western Dental failed to provide American Sign Language interpreters during his dental appointments. He asked the court to resolve a dispute about Western Dental’s document production.
The court ordered Western Dental to produce additional documents about Saechao, interpreter services, employee training, federal funding, and compliance assurances. It also required the parties to discuss a narrower way to seek records of similar complaints and allowed a limited further deposition of Western Dental’s designated witness.
Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi denied the request for additional production of the policy documents and denied the request for complaints as broadly framed, while granting the other discovery relief described in the order.
The detailed version
- Saechao v. Western Dental Services, Inc. · No. 5:24-cv-01681
- Beth Freeman
- July 16, 2025
Background
Sou Saechao, who is deaf, alleges that Western Dental failed to provide American Sign Language interpreters needed for effective communication during his dental appointments. The opinion says he brought claims under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
Saechao asked the court to resolve a dispute over Western Dental’s responses to requests for production, which are written discovery requests seeking documents. He argued that Western Dental had not timely produced responsive documents or had falsely said that responsive documents did not exist. Western Dental said it had produced all relevant documents it could locate after a diligent search.
Rulings on the discovery requests
The court ordered additional production for several requests:
- RFP 1: Western Dental had to search for and produce non-privileged records relating to Saechao from October 2023 through June
- The order specifically identified appointment records, office schedules, audit-trail and keystroke information, and metadata. For electronically stored information, the court said the production must preserve standard metadata fields unless the parties agreed otherwise. - RFP 5: Western Dental had to search for and produce non-privileged training materials from January 1, 2022, through June 30,
- This included recorded training videos and records showing whether and when employees at the San Jose office Saechao visited completed training about auxiliary aids and services. The employee-specific records had to include employees with numbers 72254 and
- - RFP 3(e): Western Dental had to produce responsive contracts with vendors providing auxiliary aids and services, along with records reflecting provision of those services at the San Jose office Saechao visited. The relevant period was January 1, 2020, through June 30, 2025, unless the parties had agreed otherwise. The court said Western Dental could not resist production merely because it needed to ask a contracted vendor for information. - RFPs 8 and 10: Western Dental had to produce documents sufficient to show whether it received federal financial assistance from January 1, 2020, through June 30, 2025, and had to produce assurances of compliance submitted when applying for such assistance. For RFP 8, Saechao could instead choose to serve a request for admission seeking a formal admission that Western Dental received federal financial assistance; if Western Dental admitted that, it would not need to produce documents responsive to RFP 8.
The court denied Saechao’s request for an order concerning RFP 3(a) because he had not established that Western Dental failed to produce the policy or missing portions of it. Western Dental did not need to take additional action on that request if it had already produced the missing pages.
As to the request for records of complaints by other people, the court agreed that such evidence could be relevant but denied Saechao’s demand as too broad because it covered every Western Dental location and complaints dating to January 1, 2010. The court instead ordered the parties to confer about whether complaint records could be searched by date, location, or subject matter to find a narrower and less burdensome way to obtain potentially relevant information.
Additional deposition and deadlines
After Western Dental completed the ordered production, and before fact discovery closed, Saechao could take a further, limited deposition of Western Dental’s designated organizational witness under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). The deposition could not exceed two hours and would concern the documents and information covered by RFPs 1, 3(e), 5, 8, and 10 that Western Dental had failed to produce before May 8, 2025.
Western Dental had to complete the ordered production by August 6, 2025. The parties had to file a joint status report by August 8, 2025, addressing their efforts to identify reasonable and efficient ways to obtain information about similar complaints.
Disposition
This was a discovery order, not a decision on whether Saechao will ultimately prevail on his disability-access claims. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi ordered additional production and a limited further deposition, denied the RFP 3(a) request, and denied the broad complaint-discovery request while requiring further discussion of a narrower approach.
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.