Cardenas v. Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc.

232 F.R.D. 377, 63 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 722, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23599, 2005 WL 3289287
District Court, D. Kansas·Decided October 13, 2005·No. Civ.A. No. 04-2478KHV-DJW·Published·Cited by 38 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

WAXSE, United States Magistrate Judge.

Pending before the Court is Plaintiffs’ Second Motion to Compel Discovery (doc. 62). Plaintiffs move to compel responses by Defendant Dorel Industries, Inc. (“DI”) to Plaintiffs’ First Requests for Production No. 57-71. In addition, Plaintiffs seek to recover the fees and expenses they have incurred in connection with the filing of this motion. For the reasons set forth below, the Court will grant the Motion to Compel. The Court will also grant Plaintiffs’ request for an award of fees and expenses.

I. Background Information

This is a product liability lawsuit involving a Touriva child safety seat (“Touriva”). According to Plaintiffs, the Touriva was designed, tested, manufactured, labeled, distributed, and sold by Defendant Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc. (“DJG”) and its parent corporation, DI.1

This case arises out of an automobile crash that took place on October 12, 2002. Leeyieeth Reyna, who was then eighteen months old, was restrained in a Touriva in the rear seat of one of the automobiles involved in the crash.2 Plaintiffs claim that as a result of the crash, Leeyieeth hit her head on one or both of the notched, rigid, unpadded and hard plastic “side wings” of the Touriva, causing her to suffer massive and permanent brain damage and other life-altering injuries.3 Plaintiffs allege that, with a properly designed seat, Leeyieeth would not have sustained such injuries.

Plaintiffs claim that the Touriva was defective and unreasonably dangerous for several reasons, including the following: (1) it used a shell and side wing design that had hard, rigid plastic with sharp edges and notches in areas that would be contacted by the child’s head in a side crash, and (2) the safety seat’s shell and side wings were inadequately padded.4 Plaintiffs assert strict liability claims against DJG and DI based on alleged design, testing, manufacturing, labeling, and warning defects in the Touriva.5 Plaintiffs also assert claims against DJG and DI for negligence in the design, testing, manufacture, labeling, and warning of defects in the Touriva.6 In addition, Plaintiffs bring claims under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act against all Defendants, alleging that the sale of the Touriva was a deceptive and unconscionable act.7

II. Analysis

A. DI’s General Objection

Before turning to the specific responses and objections made by DI, the Court will address DI’s “General Objection.” DI responded to Plaintiffs’ First Requests for Production with, inter alia, a “General Objection,” which reads as follows:

DI states that it did not design, manufacture, or distribute the Touriva child restraint system at issue in this case. DI further states that virtually all, if not all, documents in its possession relating to that product would have been sent to it by Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc. for informational purposes only, and that it has no central files specifically relating to that product, making a search for such unduly burdensome in light of their limited usefulness.

[380]*380Plaintiffs argue that this “General Objection” is meritless, relying on Swackhammer v. Sprint Corporation8 and Sonnino v. University of Kansas.9 Plaintiffs, however, have misconstrued the Court’s holding in those cases. In both cases, the Court found the general objections meritless on their face because in each the party stated that it objected to the discovery request “to the extent that ....”10 The Court noted that such objections are based on “mere hypothetical or contingent possibilities, where the objecting party makes no meaningful effort to show the application of any such theoretical objection to any request for discovery.”11

Here, DI does not use the inappropriate phrase “to the extent that” in its General Objection. Consequently, the Court does not find DI’s General Objection to be meritless on its face. The Court will therefore proceed to examine the merits of the “General Objection.”

As a threshold matter, it is unclear whether DI is attempting to assert one objection or two in its “General Objection.” It is apparent that DI asserts an undue burden objection in the second sentence of its “General Objection.” It states that it has no central files relating to the Touriva, rendering such a search unduly burdensome. As the party asserting this objection, Defendant has the burden to show not only undue burden or expense, but that the burden or expense is unreasonable in light of the benefits to be secured from the discovery.12 This burden typically imposes an obligation on the objecting party to provide an affidavit or other evidentiary proof of the time or expense involved.13

Here, DI submits no affidavit or evidentiary proof of the burden involved in responding to these requests. In fact, DI fails to address this General Objection at all in its response to the Motion to Compel. While DI does object to all but one of the requests as being facially improper because they use omnibus terms such “all documents pertaining to” or “all documents which discuss, reflect, pertain or relate to,”14 that is a substantively different objection than the General Objection of undue burden.

As DI totally fails to address this General Objection of undue burden in its response to the Motion to Compel, the Court finds it to be abandoned.15 Even if DI did not intend to abandon this General Objection, the Court would nevertheless overrule it as wholly unsupported.16

The Court will now turn to the first sentence of DI’s General Objection, which states that DI “did not design, manufacture, or distribute the Touriva child restraint system at issue.” It is unclear whether DI [381]*381intends this sentence to be a separate and distinct objection. Certainly it is not phrased as an objection, i.e., as a relevance, overbreadth, or “not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” objection. Also, DI does not satisfactorily explain in its response to the Motion to Compel how its assertion that it did not design, manufacture, or distribute the Touriva relieves it of the obligation to produce any responsive documents that may be in its possession, custody or control.

As this Court has previously held, a general objection does not fulfill a party’s burden to explain its objections; the objecting party is required to substantiate its general objection.17 To do so, the party must show specifically how, despite the broad and liberal construction afforded the federal discovery rules, each request is irrelevant, overly broad, burdensome, or oppressive by submitting affidavits or offering evidence or some type of support for each of its objections.18

To the extent DI is attempting to assert a general objection based on its contention that it did not design, manufacture, or distribute the Touriva, the Court finds that DI has failed to adequately support its objection.

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Cardenas v. Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc., 232 F.R.D. 377, 63 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 722, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23599, 2005 WL 3289287 (D. Kan. 2005).

232 F.R.D. 377 (Cardenas v. Dorel Juvenile Group, Inc.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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