New York State Energy Research & Development Authority v. Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.

97 F.R.D. 709, 36 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 1528, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17459
District Court, W.D. New York·Decided April 25, 1983·No. No. CIV-82-426·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM and ORDER

ELFVIN, District Judge.

Plaintiff in this action involving issues of liability for the removal of and the cost or value of the storage of high radioactivity level nuclear fuel wastes now stored at plaintiff’s facility in West Valley, N.Y.1 [711]*711have served a non-party, General Electric Company, with a subpoena duces tecum intended to discover information pertinent to the value of such storage to the utility company defendants. General Electric has moved to quash such subpoena and plaintiff has cross-moved to compel compliance therewith. The subpoena seeks disclosure of information related to the operation of General Electric’s Morris, 111. facility for storing nuclear wastes and requests the production of three categories of “documents,” which noun is defined as:

“all originals, drafts, and non-identical copies of any correspondence, worksheets, memoranda, decisions, testimony, exhibits, reports, schedules, graphs, tabulations, or any other written, printed, typed, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed, or graphic matter, however produced or reproduced, [including] any information stored in or accessible through computer or other information stored in or accessible through computer or other information storage or retrieval systems, together with all codes, programming instructions, and other materials necessary to understand and use such systems.”

The three categories are

“[a]ll invoices, bills or similar documents rendered by General Electric for the storage of spent fuel at the Morris Operation[,] [a]ll documents that explain or provide the basis for the charges made by General Electric for the storage of spent fuel at the Morris Operation, or if there are no such documents, all documents which were used to compute such charges[,] [and a]ll contracts, agreements and memoranda of understanding between General Electric and any utility pertaining to the storage at the Morris Operation of such utility’s spent fuel.”

General Electric moves to quash the subpoena pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. rule 45(b)(1) as unreasonable and oppressive and, under rules 45(d)(1) and 26(b) and 26(c), as directed at material that is irrelevant to this litigation and/or is entitled to protection as confidential business information, all tenable grounds for opposing enforcement of a third-party subpoena duces tecum. As to unreasonableness and oppressiveness, General Electric contends that the great breadth of plaintiff’s production demand would require an extremely burdensome search of every file that might conceivably contain items within the broad terms of the subpoena demand, in six offices around the country. It is contended that the requested items are irrelevant to this action (a contention which bears upon the burdensomeness and unreasonableness of the subpoena, to the extent that it is well-founded) because General Electric'is not in the business of storing nuclear fuel wastes at the Morris facility. The operation at Morris is said to have encountered unspecified difficulties, resulting in a number of complex lawsuits and disputes with utility companies with whom General Electric had had contracts to reprocess nuclear fuel wastes. It is urged that with one exception all of General Electric’s current contracts for fuel storage at Morris were made in settlement of these controversies. The exception involved an agreement to store a small amount of wastes for two years, to avoid an immediate shutdown of the storer’s nuclear power plant. The desire to avoid costly plant shutdowns is said to have been involved in a number of negotiations for storage. General Electric thus urges that each contract for storage was a product of unique circumstances and involves unique terms which could have no logical relevance to plaintiff’s interest in establishing the reasonable value of fuel storage to defendants. Further, if General Electric’s charges for storage services are to any degree relevant to the value of plaintiff’s similar services, nonetheless the items pertaining to General Electric’s basis for the charges, involving General Electric’s costs and profit margin, are not relevant to this issue. Plaintiff’s own costs are determinable only by plaintiff from materials to which plaintiff has ready access, and General Electric’s profit margin has no bearing upon what plaintiff’s profit margin ought to be.

[712]*712The claim of confidentiality in the subpoenaed material has several parts. Most of the existing contracts are soon due to expire and be renegotiated; disclosure to its customers of General Electric’s charges to other customers, and the cost bases of such charges, would give customers an unfair bargaining advantage, particularly in that most of the customers have the option of storing their fuel wastes at their own storage facilities. General Electric claims that, although it is not now accepting new business for its Morris facility, it may do so in the future and, if its present terms of storage and the cost bases therefor became known to potential competitors (of whom there assertedly exist a number), they would receive an unfair business advantage over General Electric. Finally, it is claimed that disclosure of the bases of General Electric’s fuel waste storage charges “could provide clues to the company’s pricing bases in related nuclear businesses, such as the sale of new fuel or performance of services, in which there is stiff competition for hundreds of millions of dollars of business each year,” resulting in unfair prejudice to General Electric in such competition (Van Hoomisen Affidavit 3-4).

General Electric urges that, if the subpoenaed material is found to be relevant to the issue of plaintiff’s damages, enforcement be delayed until my decision on plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment clarifies plaintiff’s entitlement to damages and the measure thereof and that the materials to be disclosed be covered by an appropriate protective order. In my April 8th decision on plaintiff’s summary judgment motion, I held that the utility defendants are presently liable to plaintiff under unjust enrichment principles for their use of plaintiff’s property to store their wastes, at least from February 25, 1982 to date, and would thereafter possibly be held liable for trespass by such use, if and when plaintiff unequivocally demands that the utility companies remove their wastes. The measure of compensatory damages under either theory, unjust enrichment or trespass, I held to be essentially the same—to wit, the value to the utility companies of such storage, as determined by the value to the defendants of the services received or by what the court finds would have been the agreement of the parties had the storage been bargained for. Memorandum and Order, at 64-65.

It is clear that, as noted above, relevance of the subpoenaed information has an important bearing upon the determination of a claim that a subpoena duces tecum is unreasonable or oppressive, as. well as to a claim of confidentiality for the material sought to be produced, and that a sufficient showing of need for the information will suffice to overcome such objections—albeit compliance with the subpoena may be subjected to protective orders or conditioned upon payment of expenses by the party seeking disclosure. See, e.g., Centurion Industries, Inc. v. Warren Steurer, 665 F.2d 323, 325 (10th Cir.1981); Covey Oil Company v. Continental Oil Company,

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New York State Energy Research & Development Authority v. Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., 97 F.R.D. 709, 36 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 1528, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17459 (W.D.N.Y. 1983).

97 F.R.D. 709 (New York State Energy Research & Development Authority v. Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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