McKissick v. Three Deer Ass'n

265 F.R.D. 55, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13324, 2010 WL 546638
CourtDistrict Court, D. Connecticut
DecidedFebruary 17, 2010
DocketCivil No. 3:09-CV-780 (CFD)
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 265 F.R.D. 55 (McKissick v. Three Deer Ass'n) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McKissick v. Three Deer Ass'n, 265 F.R.D. 55, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13324, 2010 WL 546638 (D. Conn. 2010).

Opinion

RULING AND ORDER ON PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL

THOMAS P. SMITH, United States Magistrate Judge.

The plaintiff, Toye McKissick (“McKis-sick”), has filed a motion to compel the defendants, Three Deer Association Limited Partnership and MCR Property Management, Inc. (“the defendants”), to produce full and complete responses to McKissick’s first sets of production requests and interrogatories. (Dkt.# 21.) Subsequent to the date on which McKissick filed the instant motion, the parties “met and conferred and culled the matters at issue.” (Def.’s Opp’n 1.) Although these efforts enabled the parties “to come to an amicable solution with regard to the vast majority of [discovery] issues,” the parties still dispute Interrogatory No. 5 and Request for Production No. 12. (Id. at 2; Pl.’s Reply 2.) The court will therefore construe the instant motion as the plaintiffs motion to compel the defendants to respond only to Interrogatory No. 5 and Request for Production No. 12. As set forth below, the plaintiffs motion is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

I. Standard of Review

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense involved in the pending litigation. Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1). The information sought need not be admissible at trial as long as the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Id. “Relevance” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) has been construed broadly to include “any matter that bear’s on, or that reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or may be in the case.” Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 351, 98 S.Ct. 2380, 57 L.Ed.2d 253 (1978). A party may object to a relevant discovery request, however, if it is “overly broad” or “unduly burdensome.” See 7 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice ¶¶ 33. 173[3]-[4] (3d ed.2004). To assert a proper objection on this basis, however, one must do more than “simply intone [the] familiar litany that the interrogatories are burdensome, oppressive or overly broad.” Compagnie Francaise d’Assurance Pour le Commerce Exterieur v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 105 F.R.D. 16, 42 (S.D.N.Y.1984). Instead, the objecting party bears the burden of demonstrating “specifically how, despite [57]*57the broad and liberal construction afforded the federal discovery rules, each [request] is not relevant or how each question is overly broad, burdensome or oppressive by submitting affidavits or offering evidence revealing the nature of the burden.” Id.; see also Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 507, 67 S.Ct. 385, 91 L.Ed. 451 (1947) (stating that “the deposition-discovery rules are to be accorded a broad and liberal treatment”).

II. Whether The Defendants’ Objections Have Been Waived

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33(b)(4) states that “[a]ny ground not stated in a timely objection is waived unless the court, for good cause, excuses the failure.” McKissick argues that “[a]s a result of Defendants’ failure to provide timely discovery responses, and their lack of good cause for such failure, Defendants should be deemed to have waived any potential objections and should therefore be compelled to respond fully to Plaintiffs discovery requests, including Interrogatory No. 5 and Document Request No. 12.” (Pi’s Reply 2.)

The Court disagrees. ' The defendants represented that their objections were untimely due to an administrative error. The defendants further represented that once they became aware of said administrative error, they “immediately worked to gather information and documents responsive to the [plaintiffs] requests.” [Def.’s Opp’n 3.] On this basis, it appears that the interests of justice would be best served by allowing the defendants to have an opportunity to voice their objections to the plaintiffs requests, “lest a federal court be compelled to order the production of every piece of paper in the Pentagon because of a tardy objection to a request to produce them.” Horace Mann Ins. Co. v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 238 F.R.D. 536, 539 (D.Conn.2006). Indeed, since it appears that the defendants neither knowingly filed untimely objections nor sought to prejudice or disadvantage the plaintiff by filing said untimely objections, the defendants should not be punished due to an inadvertent administrative error. Moreover, since the initial deadline for the defendants’ responses to McKissick’s discovery requests was October 1, 2009, and the defendants filed their first responses to those discovery requests on November 3, 2009, the Court finds that the delay of approximately one month is not sufficiently substantial as to justify the waiver of the defendants’ objections, particularly in the absence of any deliberately evasive conduct by the defendants.

III. Interrogatory No. 5

Interrogatory No. 5 asks the defendants to:

Identify each tenant who, after July 2007, has occupied 716C Windsor Ave., the unit at the Deerfield Windsor Apartments vacated by McKissick, including their dates of tenancy and number of occupants in that unit and whether the tenants were participants in any government-subsidized housing program at the Deerfield Windsor Apartments.

(Pl.’s Mot. Compel Ex. B at 6.) The defendants object, claiming that the interrogatory is neither limited in time and scope nor relevant to McKissick’s claims. (Def.’s Opp’n Ex. A at 4.) The defendants also argue that the interrogatory is “not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” and that the plaintiff is “capable of obtaining the information requested through her own efforts.” Id. Notwithstanding these objections, the defendants have largely complied with the interrogatory by providing McKissick with the names of four tenants who have since resided in McKissick’s former apartment unit, the dates in which those individuals resided therein, and the total number of occupants that resided therein. The sole remaining issue, therefore, is the defendants’ refusal to indicate whether those four tenants participated in any government-subsidized housing program.

One of the defendants’ main arguments is that since McKissick’s case is “solely about occupancy policies”—namely, whether the defendants discriminated against McKissick on the basis of her familial status—the issue of whether the four subsequent tenants participated in any government-subsidized housing program is irrelevant. (Def.’s Opp’n 4-5.) The Court agrees. McKissick claims [58]*58that she designed Interrogatory No. 5 to elicit “what role, if any, Ms. McKissick’s participation in a government subsidized housing program played in Defendants’ decision to refuse renewal of Ms. McKissick’s lease....” (Pl.’s Reply 6.) Yet nowhere in her complaint does McKissick allege that the defendants discriminated against her for financial reasons or because she participated in a government-subsidized housing program.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
265 F.R.D. 55, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13324, 2010 WL 546638, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mckissick-v-three-deer-assn-ctd-2010.