Murphy v. Minnesota Department of Human Services

Background

The court considered the plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions based on the defendant’s document production during discovery. The plaintiffs said the defendant had notified them that a substantial production was coming but then produced 169,476 documents—about 2,599,281 pages—on May 8, 2018, only weeks before the June 15, 2018 deadline for completing fact depositions. The plaintiffs said the production represented 72% of the defendant’s discovery production to that point and prevented them from reviewing and using the documents effectively in depositions. They also objected to the expected production of documents from 12 additional custodians.

The plaintiffs asked the court to allow them to reopen any deposition or depose the 12 custodians about documents from the May production and later productions. They also asked the court to bar the defendant from using documents from the May 8 production that were not included in a narrowed reproduction or an earlier production.

The case had involved repeated discovery disputes, motions to compel, and amended scheduling orders. The operative scheduling order required discovery responses or supplemental responses for certain requests by March 5, 2018, but expressly allowed documents to be produced later if the responding party specified a reasonable production time. The order did not establish a date by which document production had to be substantially complete. The defendant had also told the plaintiffs that documents would be produced on a rolling basis and that production responsive to earlier requests would be complete by April 30, 2018.

Rule 37(b)(2) sanctions

The plaintiffs first relied on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b)(2), which allows sanctions when a party fails to obey a discovery order. The court held that the defendant’s May 8 production did not clearly violate the operative scheduling order. The order contemplated later document production and did not require a particular percentage of documents to be produced by any particular time. The court therefore denied the plaintiffs’ request for sanctions under Rule 37(b)(2).

Inherent authority

The plaintiffs also relied on the court’s inherent authority to manage its proceedings. The court concluded that the circumstances did not justify sanctions under that authority. It found that further production was foreseeable because the parties had disputed the scope of discovery, the plaintiffs had sought documents reaching back to 2009, and earlier court rulings had required additional production.

The court found that the plaintiffs could have asked for more specific information about the defendant’s estimated document volume and production schedule. The plaintiffs had not objected to the April 30 production date, and when the defendant later announced that a substantial production would arrive shortly afterward, the plaintiffs did not object to the timing or seek an extension of the fact-deposition deadline.

The court also found that the defendant could have given earlier and clearer notice that a large production would follow. Nevertheless, the court found no indication that the May 8 production contained irrelevant or nonresponsive documents. It concluded that both sides bore responsibility for the situation, but that the defendant’s conduct was not sanctionable.

Requested relief

The court separately determined that the proposed relief did not correspond to the claimed prejudice. The plaintiffs had not identified specific documents requiring follow-up questioning or explained why depositions needed to be reopened. At the hearing, they had not yet reviewed the documents. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ effort to narrow the document scope through the sanctions motion after they had previously sought a broader temporal scope over the defendant’s objection.

Disposition

The court concluded that the defendant’s discovery conduct was unfortunate but not sanctionable, and that the requested sanctions would not match the prejudice alleged even if sanctionable conduct had existed. Judge Becky R. Thorson ordered that the plaintiffs’ Motion for Sanctions, Document No. 243, was DENIED.