Management Registry, Inc. v. A.W. Companies, Inc.
- John Tunheim
- 0:17-cv-05009
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 6
Management Registry v. A.W. Companies: Magistrate Judge Menendez denied Wendy Brown’s discovery motion without prejudice for inadequate good-faith discussions before filing.
Wendy Brown and the other defendants seeking discovery, and Management Registry, Inc., the plaintiff responding to the discovery requests.
What happened
In Management Registry, Inc. v. A.W. Companies, Inc., Wendy Brown asked the court to require Management Registry to provide additional discovery. Management Registry objected that the defendants had not properly discussed the disputes with its lawyers before filing the motion.
The court found that defense lawyer Mr. Loftus had not made a genuine effort to discuss all 24 discovery issues. The court therefore denied Brown’s motion without prejudice, cancelled the scheduled hearing, and ordered the parties to discuss the disputed requests by telephone within 14 days.
Magistrate Judge Katherine Menendez did not decide whether Management Registry’s discovery responses were adequate because the required discussions had not occurred.
The detailed version
- Management Registry, Inc. v. A.W. Companies, Inc. · No. 0:17-cv-05009
- John Tunheim
- May 8, 2019
Background
Defendant Wendy Brown moved to compel discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37. The motion sought an order requiring plaintiff Management Registry, Inc. (MRI) to provide additional answers and documents, including internal emails, images of potential custodians’ hard drives, electronically stored information, and other materials.
Rule 37 requires a party filing a motion to compel to certify that it made a good-faith effort to resolve the discovery dispute without court action. The District of Minnesota’s local rules impose the same requirement. The court explained that this requires genuine, two-way discussion about each disputed discovery request; sending demands by email or letter is not enough.
Court’s Analysis
Defense counsel, Mr. Loftus, raised concerns about MRI’s discovery responses in an April 18, 2019 letter and filed the motion to compel on April 26. After reviewing the motion, the court instructed the parties to have a meaningful meet-and-confer discussion through direct conversation. Instead, Mr. Loftus stated that further discussion would not change the parties’ disagreement and refused to discuss the full scope of the motion. He later agreed to discuss only one issue involving MRI’s internal emails.
The court found that the motion raised 24 separate discovery requests and that the parties had not meaningfully discussed most of them. The court also found that the later certification did not correct the problem because it continued to focus mainly on the internal-email dispute. The court said the required discussion did not require either side to compromise; it was intended to clarify which disputes were ready for a court decision.
Ruling
The court declined to decide the merits of MRI’s responses to any subset of the discovery requests. It cancelled the May 14, 2019 hearing, denied Wendy Brown’s motion to compel without prejudice, and ordered the parties to meet and confer by telephone within 14 days about any specific discovery request Brown believed was insufficient. Magistrate Judge Katherine Menendez entered the order.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.