Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR v. Eli Lilly & Co.

315 F.R.D. 191, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63199, 2016 WL 2807640
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Texas
DecidedMay 13, 2016
DocketCase No. 2:15-CV-1202-WCB
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 315 F.R.D. 191 (Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR v. Eli Lilly & Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR v. Eli Lilly & Co., 315 F.R.D. 191, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63199, 2016 WL 2807640 (E.D. Tex. 2016).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

WILLIAM C. BRYSON, UNITED STATES CIRCUIT JUDGE

Before the Court is the motion of defendant Eli Lilly & Co. (“Lilly”) for a protective order. Dkt. No. 88. The motion is DENIED.

A. Background

In the course of discovery in this case, the plaintiff, Erfindergemeinschaft UroPep GbR (“UroPep”) served Lilly with a set of 18 interrogatories. Pursuant to Rule 26(c), Fed. R. Civ. P., Lilly has moved the Court for a protective order striking UroPep’s interrogatories and requiring UroPep to serve new interrogatories in compliance with Rule 33, Fed. R. Civ. P., and the Court’s Discovery Order in this case, Dkt. No. 64. Lilly’s contention is that several of the interrogatories contain multiple parts, each of which constitutes a separate interrogatory. As a result, according to Lilly, the trae number of interrogatories contained in UroPep’s set of interrogatories is not 18, but is in excess of the limit of 25 interrogatories permitted by Rule 33, Fed. R. Civ. P., and this Court’s Discovery Order.

The Court has examined each of the complained-of interrogatories and has determined that several of them contain multiple parts that should be treated as separate interrogatories. Nonetheless, the Court concludes that the total number of interrogatories, even treating those multiple parts as separate interrogatories, does not exceed 25. Accordingly, the Court will deny Lilly’s motion for a protective order.

B. Applicable Law

Rule 33(a)(1), Fed. R. Civ. P., provides that unless otherwise stipulated or ordered by the court, “a party may serve on any other party no more than 25 written interrogatories, including all discrete subparts.” The Discovery Order in this ease similarly provides for each party to serve a maximum of 25 interrogatories. There has been no stipulation or request by either party to increase the permissible number of interrogatories. Thus, the question before the Court is how to calculate the number of interrogatories that UroPep has actually posed in the 18 numbered interrogatories that it has served on Lilly.

Calculating the number of interrogatories, in a case in which the interrogatories are not extremely straightforward, is not an exact science. When the 25-interrogatory limit was adopted as part of Rule 33 in 1993, the Advisory Committee Note provided the following rather cryptic and largely unhelpful summary:

Each party is allowed to serve 25 interrogatories upon any other party, but must secure leave of court (or a stipulation from the opposing party) to serve a larger number. Parties cannot evade this presumptive limitation through the device of joining as “subparts” questions that seek information about discrete separate subjects. However, a question asking about communications of a particular type should be treated as a single interrogatory even though it requests that the time, place, persons present, and contents be stated separately for each such communication.

146 F.R.D. 401, 675-76 (1993).

When a multi-part interrogatory is challenged as being multiplicitous, the Court must decide what constitutes a “discrete separate subject.” Courts have struggled to define that term and apply it when seeking to resolve disputes over whether one party has exceeded the permissible number of interrogatories by including multiple questions in a single interrogatory. See, e.g., Precision of New Hampton, Inc. v. TriComponent Prods. Corp., No. CV12-2020, 2012 WL 6520139, at *2 (N.D.Iowa Dec. 13, 2012) (“Courts have struggled with finding a workable method to determine if a ‘subpart’ is properly counted as an additional interrogatory.”); Carpenter v. Donegan, Civ. No. 1:11-cv-43, 2012 WL 893472, at *2 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 15, 2012) (“This [195]*195Court as well as others have found this rather brief analysis [in the Advisory Committee’s Note] insufficient to be a guide on what can become a rather complicated and contorted maze in interpreting interrogatories and their subparts as ‘discrete separate subjects’”); United States ex rel. Liotine v. CDW-Government, Inc., No. 05-38, 2010 WL 2025363, at *1 (S.D.Ill. May 20, 2010) (“There is no bright-line test on how to count parts of interrogatories.”); FTC v. Think All Publishing, L.L.C., No. 4:07-cv-11, 2008 WL 687455, at *1 (E.D.Tex. Mar. 11, 2008) (“‘discrete subpart’ has never been defined with surgical precision”); Dimitrijevic v. TV & C GP Holding Inc., Civil Action H-04-3457, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 41399, at *3-4 (S.D.Tex. Aug. 24, 2005) (“[Counting to 25 is not always easy... .No general test or formula is offered to assist courts in determining when a particular subpart is merely a device to evade the numerical limit. Nor have the courts been very successful in devising a uniform approach to the problem.”); Banks v. Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, 222 F.R.D. 7, 10 (D.D.C.2004) (identifying “discrete subpart” has “proven difficult”).

At least one point is clear. Despite some early contrary authority, see Valez v. Ford Motor Co., 134 F.R.D. 296, 298 (D.Nev.1991), it is now well settled that the question whether an interrogatory contains moi’e than one “discrete separate subject” does not turn on whether the interrogatory has separately enumerated subparts. The subparts can be explicit or implicit; the number of subparts does not turn on the formalism of labeling. See 7 James Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice § 33.30[2], at 33-33 (3d ed. 2016); Safeco of Am. v. Rawstron, 181 F.R.D. 441, 443 (C.D.Cal.1998) (“Extensive use of subparts, whether explicit or implicit, could defeat the purposes of the numerical limit contained in Rule 33(a) by rendering it meaningless, unless each subpart counts as a separate interrogatory.”).

After that, matters become more difficult. The eourts and treatise writers have used different verbal formulations in an effort to fashion a test for whether particular interrogatories contain “discrete subparts.”

One test that has occasionally been used is the “discrete bits of information” test, Prochaska & Assocs. v. Merrill Lynch Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 155 F.R.D. 189, 191 (D.Neb.1993); see also Hasan v. Johnson, No. 1-08-cv-381, 2012 WL 569370, at *4 (E.D.Cal. Feb. 21, 2012). But that test is too exacting; information that is clearly within the scope of a single inquiry may still be viewed as one of a number of “discrete bits of information.”

Another test asks whether a subpart of an interrogatory “introduces a line of inquiry that is separate and distinct from the inquiry made by the portion of the interrogatory that precedes it.” Ott v. Mortgage Investors Corp. of Ohio, Inc., No. 3-14-cv-645, 2015 WL 691643, at *1 (D.Or. Feb. 17, 2015); Kline v. Berry, 287 F.R.D. 75, 79 (D.D.C.2012); Thomas v. Yates, No. 05-1198, 2009 WL 3273280, at *2 (E.D.Cal. Oct. 9, 2009); Theobles v. Industrial Maintenance Co., 247 F.R.D. 483, 485 (D.V.I.2006); Willingham v. Ashcroft, 226 F.R.D. 57, 59 (D.D.C.2005). While that test is accurate as far as it goes, it is essentially just a restatement of the term “discrete subpart” that it is intended to define, so it does not add much by way of resolving power.

One leading treatise states that “it would appear that an interrogatory containing sub-parts directed at eliciting details concerning a common theme should be considered a single question.” 8B Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Richard L. Marcus, Federal Practice & Procedure § 2168.1, at 39-40 (2010). That “common theme” standard can be useful and has been invoked by some courts.

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315 F.R.D. 191, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63199, 2016 WL 2807640, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/erfindergemeinschaft-uropep-gbr-v-eli-lilly-co-txed-2016.