Fergins v. Amazon Web Services, Inc.

• Court: District Court, S.D. California
• Decided: February 8, 2023
• Docket: 3:22-cv-01177
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 10 11 CHARLES ALBERT FERGINS, Case No.: 22-CV-1177-JLS-WVG

12 Plaintiff, ORDER ON DISCOVERY DISPUTE 13 v. 14 AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC., 15 Defendant. 16 17 18 Pending before the Court are the Parties’ simultaneously filed briefs on a dispute 19 concerning Defendant’s objections to written discovery Plaintiff propounded. (Doc. Nos. 20 11, 13.) The Parties timely raised the dispute to this Court’s Chambers on January 26, 2023. 21 Pursuant to its January 27, 2023, Order, the Court convened a Video Discovery Conference 22 on February 3, 2023, following the Parties’ briefing of the issues. (Doc. No. 9.) As stated 23 on the record during the February 3, 2023, Conference, the Court OVERRULES 24 Defendant’s objections to Special Interrogatories (“SROGs”) Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 25 12 and Requests for Production of Documents (“RFPs”) Nos. 2, 5, 13, and 14 and ORDERS 26 Defendant to produce its discovery responses and documents to all disputed SROGs and 27 RFPs on or before Friday, February 17, 2023. The Court elaborates below. 28 / / / 1 Since August 2018, Plaintiff has worked for Defendant (or “the Company”). (Doc. 2 No. 1-2, ¶ 14.) As a current employee of the Company, Plaintiff has sued Defendant for 3 race and disability discrimination under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act 4 (“FEHA”), failure to prevent discrimination under the FEHA, retaliation under the FEHA 5 and California Labor Code section 1102.5, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. 6 (See generally Doc. No. 1-2). Before initiating this Action, Plaintiff filed two charges 7 against Defendant with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). The 8 first charge related to events that Plaintiff alleges to have occurred between 2018 and 2019. 9 The second charge Plaintiff filed related to events Plaintiff alleges to have begun in 2020 10 and that are ongoing. As to the first charge, the EEOC issued a right-to-sue letter to 11 Plaintiff, which expired on or around August 21, 2020. Plaintiff did not commence 12 litigation until June 14, 2022, more than two years later. For this reason, Defendant argues 13 Plaintiff is time-barred from seeking discovery on any matters related to his first charge. 14 In accordance with its position, Defendant objects on grounds that the SROGs and RFPs 15 are not relevant or reasonably likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. 16 Plaintiff opposes Defendant’s position in its entirety. He counters that the scope of 17 discovery is broad, and the information and documents related to the first charge are 18 relevant to the violations Plaintiff alleged in his second charge. 19 The Court takes the same view as Plaintiff. Under Rule 26(b) of the Federal Rules 20 of Civil Procedure, a party may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that 21 is relevant to any claim or defense. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1); Tattersalls Ltd. v. Wiener, 22 2019 WL 13204024, at *1 (S.D. Cal. Nov. 19, 2019). Relevant information need not be 23 admissible at trial so long as the discovery appears to be reasonably calculated to lead to 24 the discovery of admissible evidence. Id. Relevance is construed broadly to include any 25 matter that bears on, or reasonably could lead to other matters that could bear on, any issue 26 that may be in the case. Rogers v. Giurbino, 288 F.R.D. 469, 478–79 (S.D. Cal. Dec. 19, 27 2012) (citing Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 350–51 (1978) and 28 Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 501 (1947).). To that end, district courts have broad 1 discretion to determine relevancy for discovery purposes. Scherer v. FCA US, LLC, 538 F. 2 Supp. 3d 1002, 1004 (S.D. Cal. May 12, 2021) (citing Hallett v. Morgan, 296 F.3d 732, 3 751 (9th Cir. 2002); see also Surfvivor Media v. Survivor Prods., 406 F.3d 625, 635 (9th 4 Cir. 2005) (same); U.S. Fidelity and Guar. Co. v. Lee Investments L.L.C., 641 F.3d 1126, 5 1136 (9th Cir. 2011) (“District courts have wide latitude in controlling discovery, and 6 [their] rulings will not be overturned in the absence of a clear abuse of discretion.”). 7 Defendant posits that, because the allegations underlying Plaintiff’s first charge are 8 not actionable under the statute of limitations, Plaintiff should not be permitted to take 9 discovery of any matters related to the first charge. Defendant adds that the first charge and 10 the second charge involve different supervisors and performance management events. 11 From there, Defendant concludes no documents or information pertaining to the first 12 charge bear relevance upon the allegations in his second charge, which form the basis of 13 the Complaint here. The Court is not persuaded by Defendant’s position. As stated, the 14 relevance standard is necessarily broad to “encompass any matter that bears on, or that 15 reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or may be in the 16 case.” Gusman v. Comcast Corp., 298 F.R.D. 592, 595 (S.D. Cal. Apr. 2, 2014) (citing 17 Oppenheimer Fund, Inc., 437 U.S. at 351 and Hickman, 329 U.S. at 501.). 18 Defendant cites to Morgan to argue the factual distinctions between the first and 19 second charges prohibit the inference that Plaintiff asserts a “continuing violations” theory, 20 which otherwise may have permitted Plaintiff to take discovery on the first charge. See 21 generally Morgan v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 88 Cal.App.4th 52, 67 (2000). But the Court 22 is not persuaded by Morgan or any of the other authorities Defendant cites. None of those 23 cases address the circumstance we have here: despite the factual distinctions between the 24 first and second charges, Plaintiff broadly alleges he has suffered and continues to suffer 25 from discriminatory and retaliatory workplace practices. Accordingly, given the very close 26 temporal proximity between the two charges, namely a gap of one year, Plaintiff could 27 conceivably obtain discovery on the first charge – which may not ultimately be admissible 28 at trial on grounds that the discovery relates to time-barred claims – that could lead to the 1 || discovery of admissible evidence pertaining to Plaintiff's second charge. This is precisely 2 ||the kind of discovery that the broad scope of Rule 26(b) contemplates. Accordingly, the 3 || Court OVERRULES Defendant’s objections to Plaintiff's SROGs Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 4 ||and 12 and RFPs Nos. 2, 5, 13, and 14, and ORDERS Defendant to produce responses and 5 ||documents accordingly no later than Friday, February 17, 2023. 6 IT IS SO ORDERED. 7 ||DATED: February 8, 2023 UM Ss 9 Hon. William V. Gallo 10 United States Magistrate Judge 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28