In re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation

317 F.R.D. 562, 95 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1389, 2016 WL 4943393, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 126448
CourtDistrict Court, D. Arizona
DecidedSeptember 16, 2016
DocketNo. MDL 15-02641-PHX DGC
StatusPublished
Cited by81 cases

This text of 317 F.R.D. 562 (In re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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In re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation, 317 F.R.D. 562, 95 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1389, 2016 WL 4943393, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 126448 (D. Ariz. 2016).

Opinion

[563]*563ORDER

David G. Campbell, United States District Judge

The Court held a fifth ease management conference with the parties on August 23, 2016. In preparation for the conference, the parties provided a joint status report that identified a number of issues for discussion. Doc. 3102. The report noted that the parties disagree on the discoverability of certain electronically stored information (“ESI”) generated by foreign entities (subsidiaries or divisions of Defendant C.R. Bard) that sell IVC filters abroad. Plaintiffs seek discovery of communications between the foreign entities and foreign regulatory bodies regarding the IVC filters at issue in this case. Doc. 3264 at 2. The Court discussed this topic at some length during the status conference on August 23, 2016, and directed the parties to provide focused briefing. Each side has now filed a memorandum addressing this issue. Docs. 3309, 3326. For the reasons set forth below, the Court will deny Plaintiffs’ request for this discovery.

I. New Legal Standards Governing the Scope of Discovery.

Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was amended on December 1, 2015. The new rule defines the scope of permissible discovery as follows:

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the party’s access to relevant information, the party’s resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden and expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1).

A. Relevancy.

To be discoverable under the first part of this test, information must be “relevant to any party’s claim or defense.” Id. This language has not changed from the previous version of Rule 26(b)(1).

Before the 2015 amendments, Rule 26(b)(1) also provided that inadmissible evidence was discoverable if it “appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” Some courts — and many lawyers — used this language to define the scope of discovery. See, e.g., Surfvivor Media, Inc. v. Survivor Prods., 406 F.3d 625, 635 (9th Cir.2005) (“Relevant information for purposes of discovery is information ‘reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.’”) (quoting Brown Bag Software v. Symantec Corp., 960 F.2d 1465, 1470 (9th Cir.1992)).

This phrase was eliminated by the 2015 amendments and replaced with a more direct declaration of the phrase’s original intent: “Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). The Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provided this explanation for the deletion:

The former provision for discovery of relevant but inadmissible information that appears “reasonably calculated to lead to the [564]*564discovery of admissible evidence” is also deleted. The phrase has been used by some, incorrectly, to define the scope of discovery. As the Committee Note to the 2000 amendments observed, use of the “reasonably calculated” phrase to define the scope of discovery “might swallow any other limitation on the scope of discovery.” The 2000 amendments sought to prevent such misuse by adding the word “relevant” at the beginning of the sentence, making clear that “relevant” means within the scope of discovery as defined in this subdivision....” The “reasonably calculated” phrase has continued to create problems, however, and is removed by these amendments.

Rule 26, Advis. Comm. Notes for 2016 Amends.

The 2015 amendments thus eliminated the “reasonably calculated” phrase as a definition for the scope of permissible discovery. Despite this clear change, many courts continue to use the phrase. Old habits die hard.1 In this circuit, courts cite two Ninth Circuit cases — Surfvivor Media, Inc. v. Survivor Prods., 406 F.3d 625, 635 (9th Cir.2005), and Brown Bag Software v. Symantec Corp., 960 F.2d 1465, 1470 (9th Cir.1992) — for the proposition that information is relevant for purposes of Rule 26(b)(1) if it is “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.”2 But these cases, and others like them, simply applied the earlier version of Rule 26(b)(1).

Amended Rule 26(b)(1) was adopted pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2072 et. seq. That statute provides that “[a]ll laws in conflict with such rules shall be of no further force or effect after such rules have taken effect.” Id., § 2072(b). Thus, just as a statute could effectively overrule cases applying a former legal standard, the 2015 amendment effectively abrogated cases applying a prior version of Rule 26(b)(1). The test going forward is whether evidence is “relevant to any party’s claim or defense,” not whether it is “reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence.”

B. Proportionality.

The 2015 amendments also added proportionality as a requirement for permissible discovery. Relevancy alone is no longer sufficient — discovery must also be proportional to the needs of the ease. The Advisory Committee Note makes clear, however, that the amendment does not place the burden of proving proportionality on the party seeking discovery. The amendment “does not change the existing responsibilities of the court and the parties to consider proportionality, and the change does not place on the party seeking discovery the burden addressing all proportionality considerations.” Rule 26, Advis. Comm. Notes for 2015 Amends. Rather, “[t]he parties and the court have a collective responsibility to consider the proportionality of all discovery and consider it in resolving discovery disputes.” Id.

The inquiry to be conducted under the proportionality requirement, therefore, requires input from both sides. As the Advisory Committee explained:

[565]*565A party claiming undue burden or expense ordinarily has far better information — perhaps the only information — with respect to that part of the determination. A party claiming that a request is important to resolve the issues should be able to explain the ways in which the underlying information bears on the issues as that party understands them.

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317 F.R.D. 562, 95 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 1389, 2016 WL 4943393, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 126448, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-bard-ivc-filters-products-liability-litigation-azd-2016.