Watkins Incorporated v. McCormick and Company, Incorporated

Background

Watkins moved to compel discovery from McCormick concerning McCormick’s black-pepper products and profits. The requests included monthly sales, customer and pricing information, costs of goods sold, profits, revenue from certain products, and procurement documents.

Watkins had served Interrogatory No. 5 in 2016. McCormick partially answered but objected to providing profit information, including on relevance and proportionality grounds. Watkins did not move to compel a fuller answer during the years the case was pending in multidistrict litigation proceedings in the District of Columbia.

After the case returned to the District of Minnesota, Watkins sought answers to Interrogatories 5, 14, 15, and 20 and a response to Document Request 14. The disputed discovery related to McCormick’s profits. McCormick argued, among other things, that the profit information was not relevant because Watkins had not included disgorgement of profits in its requested relief. The court declined to decide the underlying pleading issue or whether disgorgement was legally available.

Court’s analysis

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 permits discovery of nonprivileged information that is relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. The court denied the request for a supplemental answer to Interrogatory No. 5 because Watkins had not diligently pursued the dispute after learning of McCormick’s objections in 2016.

The court denied the request concerning Interrogatory No. 20 because Watkins had not included that request in the discovery dispute it presented to the District of Columbia court before remand. The court also denied the request for Document Request No. 14 because Watkins had not sufficiently shown that the requested information was relevant and proportional.

The court denied the request for supplemental answers to Interrogatories 14 and 15 as written. It found that the interrogatories relied on a difficult-to-follow product definition and had no time limits, making them vague and overly broad. The court stated that information about McCormick’s profits might be relevant and proportional, but it did not resolve whether Watkins could pursue disgorgement of profits. The court also declined to impose a discovery sanction based on Watkins’s failure to identify disgorgement as a damages category in its initial disclosures.

Order

The court denied Watkins’s Motion to Compel. Specifically, it denied the requests for answers or responses to Interrogatories 5 and 20 and Document Request 14. It denied the request for supplemental answers to Interrogatories 14 and 15, except that it granted Watkins leave to work with McCormick to clarify and narrow those two requests.

The lawyers were ordered to meet and confer immediately and complete that process within seven days. If they could not agree on revised interrogatories, they had to submit competing proposals and arguments within fourteen days. McCormick was required to supplement its answers within thirty days after the parties agreed on revised interrogatories, or within seven days after the court ruled on competing proposals if they did not agree.

The court also required McCormick, after conferring with Watkins, to propose any additional fact discovery it believed was needed because of the order. It kept the September 1, 2020 deadline for all other fact discovery and set additional deadlines for any permitted follow-up discovery.