Essilor International SAS v. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Background

Essilor Manufacturing (Thailand) Co. Ltd. moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(3) for an order requiring J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. to produce requested discovery. The court applied the discovery-limit rule requiring it to limit discovery that is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or whose burden or expense outweighs its likely benefit.

Rulings on the Requests

The court denied the request for each line item of operating expense for the bank’s fraud-prevention operations. Although evidence about those operations was relevant, the court found that Essilor had not shown that the costs of those operations were relevant or that their relevance outweighed the burden or expense of producing the information.

The court also denied the request for reports to the bank’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Jamie Dimon, about the EMTC Fraud Event. The court found it speculative that those reports would contain relevant information not already produced and concluded that the request was unreasonably cumulative.

The court deferred ruling on the request for Client Profile Data. It ordered the parties to meet and confer by May 24, 2024, and to report by May 29, 2024, if a live dispute remained. If no filing was made by May 29, the court said it would assume the dispute had been resolved and close the motion.

Other Issues and Disposition

The court stated that the dispute over EMTC transactional-history reports and the dispute over the bank’s document-retention policy were moot. Essilor also raised a concern in its reply letter about whether the bank would answer interrogatories concerning document retention, but the court did not address that issue because no motion had been made regarding the interrogatory answers.

Judge Liman ordered that the motion was denied in part, and the court deferred a ruling in part.