Dairyland Power Cooperative v. United States

79 Fed. Cl. 722, 2007 U.S. Claims LEXIS 387, 2007 WL 4348046
United States Court of Federal Claims·Decided November 20, 2007·No. No. 04-106 C·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

DAMICH, Chief Judge.

Before the Court is Plaintiff Dairyland Power Cooperative’s motion to compel Defendant United States’s compliance with the Court’s February 5, 2007 order compelling discovery responses (“February 5, 2007 Order”) relating to interrogatories and document requests. This order had required the government to respond to interrogatories and requests for document production that Dairyland had submitted. The basis of Dairyland’s motion to compel is an allegation that the government inadequately responded to these same interrogatories and requests for document production.

As a remedy for the government’s purported failure to comply with the Court’s February 5, 2007 Order, Dairyland requests that this Court order the government to supplement specific interrogatory responses that Dairyland views as particularly problematic. In addition, Dairyland seeks monetary sanctions against the government, pursuant to Rule 37(b) of the Rules of the Court of Federal Claims (RCFC), for both the government’s allegedly inadequate interrogatory responses and document production efforts. [724]*724The government also cross-moves this Court for reciprocal, rather than unilateral, obligations on the parties relating to document production, in the event that the Court finds that “Dairyland has no obligation to tie its document production to Government document production requests.” Defendant’s Response to Plaintiffs Motion to Enforce February 5, 2007 Order and for Sanctions, and Defendant’s Motion for Imposition of Reciprocal Obligations Upon the Parties (Def.’s Response) at 23.

For the reasons described herein, the Court finds that Dairyland has adequately responded to the government’s document production requests. However, the Court also finds that one of the seven interrogatory responses with which Dairyland has taken issue was not responsive to the inquiry involved and ORDERS the government to supplement this same response.

As for the other six of the interrogatories, the Court finds only one of the responses to be satisfactory, while the five remaining responses at issue require further consideration by this Court. In that regard, the Court ORDERS Dairyland to submit a report as to whether the discovery that has taken place since the completion of briefing on this motion has given Dairyland the information sought in these five other interrogatories. Pending submission of that report, the Court will postpone ruling on Dairyland’s request for sanctions.

Finally, the Court acknowledges Dairy-land’s withdrawal of its initial request for more specific production or indications of certain documents. The Court also finds no need to impose “reciprocal obligations” in regard to document production upon Dairy-land. Dairyland’s motion to compel, therefore, is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The government’s motion for so-called “reciprocal obligations” is DENIED.

I. BACKGROUND

This immediate discovery dispute concerns one of several cases filed by nuclear utilities in the Court of Federal Claims regarding the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) compliance with the “Standard Contract”1 issued pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982, 42 U.S.C. §§ 10101-10270. The Standard Contract provides for the government’s acceptance, transportation, storage, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and other high-level radioactive waste (HLW), the costs of which would be borne by the “generators and owners” thereof. Id. at § 10131(b).

Plaintiff Dairyland, an electric generation and transmission cooperative providing electrical power to 25 member electric cooperatives and 14 municipal utility members located in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, entered into the Standard Contract in 1983 with DOE for the removal of SNF and HLW from Dairyland’s La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor (LACBWR) in Genoa, Wisconsin, in exchange for the payment of fees. Compl. 11111-2, 4. Dairyland filed its complaint alleging breach of this contract on January 28, 2004. Following the Court’s summary judgment in a similar case, Energy Northwest v. United States, in favor of the plaintiff on the issue of contractual liability, this Court, on April 27, 2006, also entered summary judgment in Dairyland’s favor on the same issue. Order of Summary Judgment (Apr. 27, 2006); see also Energy Northwest v. United States, 69 Fed.Cl. 500 (2006).

The parties in this ease then entered into discovery concerning the issue of damages. Dissatisfied with the government’s response to Dairyland’s First Request for Production of Documents and First Set of Interrogatories, Dairyland, on December 28,2006, filed a motion to compel discovery responses relating to these interrogatories and document requests. Briefing on this motion was completed on January 24, 2007. Oral argument was held in court on the following day. On February 5, 2007, the Court granted Dairy-land’s motion to compel discovery responses. Order (February 5, 2007). The Court specifically ordered the government, to the extent [725]*725the government “ha[d] already produced documents in earlier coordinated discovery in the spent nuclear fuel litigation or otherwise” and placed such documents on the secure online database of such documents the government had developed to manage discovery requests in this litigation, to “at least identify with reasonable particularity those documents it deem[ed] responsive to Plaintiffs specific requests.” Id. at 2.

Contending that the government’s amended responses to Dairyland’s document identification requests and supplemental interrogatory responses violated the Court’s February 5, 2007 Order, Dairyland, on April 2, 2007, moved this Court to compel “proper responses” to Dairyland’s document requests, identifying 33 of 42 responses as problematic and specifically requesting the Court’s intervention in regard to 20 of these. Dairyland also sought “complete answers” to specified contention interrogatories, namely those numbered 5, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 in the First Set of Interrogatories. Dairyland’s Motion to Enforce February 5, 2007 Order and for Sanctions (Plf.’s Mot.) at 1-2. Dairyland also requested the imposition of sanctions, pursuant to RCFC 37(b), specifically in the form of awarding Dairyland costs and attorneys’ fees incurred in prosecuting this motion and responding to the government’s requests for enlargements of time to comply with the February 5, 2007 Order. Id. at 3, 9.

On April 20, 2007, the government responded to Dairyland’s motion, arguing that Dairyland sought to impose an impractical burden on the government’s document production efforts and that the responses to the specified interrogatories were, in fact, appropriate. See generally Defendant’s Response (Def.’s Response) to Plaintiffs Motion to Enforce February 5, 2007 Order and for Sanctions, and Defendant’s Motion for Imposition of Reciprocal Obligations Upon the Parties at 3-14. Criticizing Dairyland’s request for sanctions, the government cited Dairyland’s purported lack of cooperation with the government’s own document production requests by also failing to identify documents pertaining to this ease with sufficient specificity. Reciprocal document production obligations were consequently warranted especially if, impliedly, the Court imposed upon the government additional document production obligations beyond those already in place. See generally id. at 18-24.

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Dairyland Power Cooperative v. United States, 79 Fed. Cl. 722, 2007 U.S. Claims LEXIS 387, 2007 WL 4348046 (uscfc 2007).

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