Miranda Dairy v. Harry Shelton Livestock, LLC

Background

The opinion addresses a jointly filed letter brief concerning a discovery dispute. Plaintiffs, who are organic milk producers, alleged that they entered an agreement with defendants to feed and raise organic cattle and that defendants sold them diseased cattle that were unfit to be organic. Plaintiffs asserted claims for breach of contract, fraud, and negligence, and sought several types of damages, including general, special, punitive, and treble damages.

Plaintiffs alleged that the cattle infected their herds, caused them to discard large amounts of milk and slaughter cattle, and caused them to lose the organic quality required under their milk-production agreements. According to the opinion, plaintiffs claimed they therefore had to sell cattle and could not sell their milk.

Discovery Requests

Defendants asked the court to compel production of:

1. Plaintiffs’ financial records maintained in QuickBooks from 2010 to the present; and 2. Plaintiffs’ daily milk-production records from 2014 to the present, including testing data and somatic cell counts.

Defendants also sought additional depositions of Tim Miranda and Francis because plaintiffs had supplemented their financial information for 2016 through 2018 after those depositions had occurred. Defendants also sought to depose Kyle Miranda. Plaintiffs stated that they could not take a position on that request at the time and did not specifically oppose it.

Court’s Analysis

The court explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) generally allows discovery of nonprivileged information that is relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. A party resisting discovery must specifically explain why a request is overly broad, burdensome, irrelevant, or disproportionate. Generalized or boilerplate objections are inadequate.

The court rejected plaintiffs’ objection that the requested financial records covered too long a period. The court stated that defendants sought the information to evaluate the scope of plaintiffs’ claimed damages, including lost profits, increased expenses, mitigation of damages, natural market fluctuations, and other factors that could have affected the profitability of plaintiffs’ business. The court therefore found the objection unpersuasive.

The court also found that plaintiffs did not specifically object to the request for daily milk-production records. Their general complaint about the number of discovery requests and the volume of documents already produced did not adequately challenge this particular request.

Ruling

The court granted defendants’ request to compel production of plaintiffs’ QuickBooks financial records from 2010 to the present and overruled plaintiffs’ objections. Plaintiffs were ordered to produce those records promptly.

The court also granted defendants’ request to compel production of plaintiffs’ daily milk-production records from 2014 to the present, including testing data and somatic cell counts, and overruled plaintiffs’ objections. Plaintiffs were ordered to produce those records promptly.

After producing the ordered materials, plaintiffs were ordered to cooperate with defendants in scheduling follow-up depositions of Francis, Tim Miranda, and Kyle Miranda as soon as practicable. Judge Robert M. Illman entered the order on September 30, 2021.