Optronic Technologies, Inc. v. Ningbo Sunny Electronic Co., Ltd.
- Edward Davila
- 5:16-cv-06370
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
Optronic Technologies v. Ningbo Sunny: Judge DeMarchi ordered Ningbo Sunny to amend interrogatory responses involving Chinese-language documents.
Ningbo Sunny must amend its responses to Optronic's specified post-judgment interrogatories; the order affects how the parties use English- and Chinese-language documents in discovery.
What happened
In Optronic Technologies, Inc. v. Ningbo Sunny Electronic Co., Ltd., the parties disputed whether Ningbo Sunny could answer post-judgment interrogatories by directing Optronic to produced documents.
The court explained that Rule 33(d) allows a party to refer to business records only when the other party can find the answers as easily and, when the records are not in English, translations are required. The court could not resolve how many cited documents were in English, but found no identified problem with the English documents.
Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi ordered Ningbo Sunny to serve amended responses to nine interrogatories by March 11, 2020. Ningbo Sunny could provide narrative answers that did not rely on Chinese-language documents or provide English translations of the Chinese documents it relied on.
The detailed version
- Optronic Technologies, Inc. v. Ningbo Sunny Electronic Co., Ltd. · No. 5:16-cv-06370
- Edward Davila
- Mar. 4, 2020
Background
Optronic Technologies, Inc. and Ningbo Sunny Electronic Co. disputed whether Ningbo Sunny properly answered Optronic's post-judgment interrogatories by referring almost entirely to documents produced in response to document requests. Ningbo Sunny used this approach for Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 16, and 17.
Optronic argued that the responses were improper because many of the referenced documents were largely in Mandarin Chinese, making it harder for Optronic to determine the answers than for Ningbo Sunny. Ningbo Sunny said that only a limited number of the documents were in Chinese. It stated that all or almost all documents for Interrogatories Nos. 2, 5, 9, and 10 were in English, and that most documents for Interrogatory No. 6 were in English. It did not state whether the 13 documents cited for Interrogatories Nos. 1, 12, 16, and 17 were in English or Chinese.
Rule and Analysis
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33(d) permits a party to answer an interrogatory by identifying business records when the answer can be determined from those records and the burden of finding the answer is substantially the same for both parties. The records must be identified in enough detail for the requesting party to locate them as readily as the responding party could.
The court noted that courts addressing non-English records had uniformly concluded that a party may not rely on those records for a Rule 33(d) response unless it provides a translation. The court could not resolve the parties' disagreement about the number of English-language and Chinese-language documents based on the record. It found no reason to conclude that Ningbo Sunny's responses failed to comply with Rule 33(d) when they relied on English-language documents. But Ningbo Sunny could not rely on Chinese-language documents without providing English translations.
Ruling
The court ordered Ningbo Sunny to serve amended responses to Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 16, and 17 by March 11, 2020. For the Chinese-language documents on which it relied, Ningbo Sunny could either provide narrative answers that did not rely on those documents or provide English translations. The order was issued by Virginia K. DeMarchi, United States Magistrate Judge.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.