Pacific Life Insurance Company, et al. v. U.S. Bank National Association

Background

Plaintiffs Pacific Life & Annuity Company and Pacific Life Insurance Company filed a letter-motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 to compel nonparty Citibank, N.A., and its affiliates, including CitiMortgage, Inc. (collectively referred to in the opinion as “Citi”), to produce subpoenaed loan files and related documents. Citi opposed the motion and later submitted a supplemental declaration. The court also held a conference concerning the motion.

Court’s Analysis

Rule 45 permits a party to subpoena documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things that are in a nonparty’s possession, custody, or control. It also requires the issuing party to take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense on the subpoena recipient.

Citi represented that it had conducted a reasonable search and produced all documents it was able to locate. It had produced more than 1,500 loan files, in addition to other documents, and reported spending hundreds of labor hours and more than $400,000 on legal fees and production costs. The additional search proposed by Plaintiffs would require Citi to search transaction-history databases manually by full borrower address. Because the system required exact-character matches, each possible address variation would have to be entered separately. Citi also represented that the additional searches were unlikely to locate many more files.

Ruling

The court stated that Citi was expected to produce documents reasonably accessible after a diligent search, but declined to require it to undertake the proposed manual address search because the search would be unduly burdensome and costly. Judge Jeannette A. Vargas therefore denied Plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel and directed the clerk to terminate ECF No. 326.