PRATER v. ALLIANCE COAL, LLC

CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Indiana
DecidedSeptember 21, 2023
Docket3:21-cv-00066
StatusUnknown

This text of PRATER v. ALLIANCE COAL, LLC (PRATER v. ALLIANCE COAL, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Indiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
PRATER v. ALLIANCE COAL, LLC, (S.D. Ind. 2023).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA EVANSVILLE DIVISION

BRIAN PRATER, et al., ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) v. ) No. 3:21-cv-00066-RLY-MJD ) ALLIANCE COAL, LLC, et al., ) ) Defendants. )

ORDER ON PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO COMPEL THE PRODUCTION OF CERTAIN ESI AND NARROWED CATEGORIES OF DOCUMENTS RESPONSIVE TO THE FIRST REQUEST FOR THE PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS

This matter is before the Court on Plaintiff's Motion to Compel the Production of Certain ESI and Narrowed Categories of Documents Responsive to the First Request for the Production of Documents. [Dkt. 127.] The Court held a hearing on the motion on June 21, 2023. See [Dkt. 195]. For the reasons and to the extent set forth below, the motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. I. Background This case was filed by Plaintiff Brian Prater, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, on April 13, 2021. [Dkt. 1.] In a nutshell, Prater alleged that Defendants, operating as joint employers of Prater and "all employees who worked as miners in Defendants’ Gibson North and Gibson South mines in Gibson County, Indiana," Id. at 2, failed to pay their employees for "off-the-clock work" and for all overtime they were due. Prater asserted a claim for violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq., and unjust enrichment. Defendant Gibson County Coal, LLC, moved to dismiss the unjust enrichment claim. [Dkt. 31.] The remaining Defendants, hereinafter referred to as the "Alliance Defendants," moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. [Dkt. 33.] Defendants also moved to trifurcate discovery into three phases: Phase I (the "Joint Employer Phase"); (ii) Phase II (the

"Certification Phase"); and (iii) Phase III (the "Merits Phase"). [Dkt. 29.] While those motions were pending, Prater moved to conditionally certify a collective action. [Dkt. 44.] On December 2, 2021, Prater served his First Requests for Production on each of the Defendants, which consisted of 59 document requests. See [Dkt. 128-1]. In March 2022, Judge Young granted the motion to dismiss the unjust enrichment claim and denied the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction without prejudice, finding that the Alliance Defendants were not subject to general jurisdiction in Indiana and that Prater was entitled to conduct jurisdictional discovery with regard to specific jurisdiction. [Dkt. 70.] Judge Young also granted the motion for conditional certification. [Dkt. 72.] Judge Brookman denied Defendants' motion to trifurcate. [Dkt. 71.]

A case management plan was entered in this case on April 5, 2022; it set a deadline of July 1, 2022, for jurisdictional discovery. [Dkt. 78.] As a result of disputes regarding Prater's jurisdictional discovery requests, that deadline was later extended to September 1, 2022. [Dkt. 85.] On May 16, 2022, Defendants filed a motion to vacate certain deadlines relating to those discovery disputes, reporting that they had decided to withdraw their challenge to specific jurisdiction. [Dkt. 91.] On July 1, 2022, Prater filed a motion for leave to amend his complaint, [Dkt. 114], to which Defendants objected, [Dkt. 120]. That motion was granted on March 23, 2023, and the Amended Complaint was filed a few days later, [Dkt. 155].

2 In their Amended Complaint, Prater and two new named Plaintiffs, Eric Thompson and Jacob Hood, asserted individual, class, and collective action claims pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq., and the Indiana Wage Payment Statute ("IWPS"), Ind. Code § 22-2-5-1, et seq., as well as a claim for unjust enrichment. On April 10,

2023, Defendants moved to dismiss the unjust enrichment and IWPS claims, [Dkt. 158]; that motion remains pending. The Court recites this rather lengthy history for two reasons. First, it explains why the instant motion to compel was not filed until October 4, 2022, when the discovery requests at issue were served on December 2, 2021. Second, it demonstrates that it is abundantly clear that none of the parties have been particularly motivated to move this case forward in an expeditious manner. Indeed, on February 1, 2023, [Dkt. 151], and again on May 1, 2023, [Dkt. 162], the parties moved to stay all of the deadlines in this case pending the completion of private mediation proceedings. Those motions were both denied, first by Judge Brookman, [Dkt. 152], and then, after the case was reassigned, by the Undersigned, [Dkt. 165].1 As those denials

suggest, it is time for this case to finally begin moving toward a resolution, which requires merits discovery to move forward expeditiously. II. Motion to Compel Responses to Document Requests Given the backdrop set forth above, it is unfortunate that the Court has reached the inescapable conclusion that the parties' briefing of the instant motion, as well as the time the Court has spent reviewing it, has largely been a waste of time. There are several reasons for that but, most fundamentally, Prater did not move to compel responses to the document requests that

1 The mediation took place on June 12, 2023. It was unsuccessful. 3 were actually served, but rather seeks to compel responses to an entirely new set of eleven document requests.2 Prater characterizes the new requests as a "narrowing" of his initial requests, and the new requests are narrower, in that they seek a more narrowly tailored set of information, but they are not simply the original requests made narrower. And while Defendants

certainly could have (and frankly would have, had they been interested in moving this case along) responded to the motion to compel by engaging with the new requests, they did not, instead choosing to discuss the problems they perceived with the original requests. That was their right; they are correct that the Court cannot compel them to respond to document requests that have not been served, regardless of how much more efficient that course of action might have been. The motion to compel must therefore be denied as to the document requests. However, the Court agrees with Prater that the eleven document requests set forth in the motion are an appropriate means to move discovery forward in this case. Accordingly, Plaintiffs shall serve those requests (hereinafter referred to as the " Supplemental Requests") on Defendants within

seven days of the date of this Order. Defendants shall respond fully and completely to the Supplemental Requests within 30 days of the date of service. To the extent that Defendants have already produced documents that are responsive to a request contained in the Supplemental

2 The Court recognizes that Prater ends his brief with the following sentence: "In the alternative, the Court should strike all of Defendants’ baseless and obstructive objections and Order that they fully respond to each of the requests in Plaintiff’s First RFP." [Dkt. 128 at 25.] However, Prater's brief does not provide adequate support for that alternative relief, and “[i]t is not this court's responsibility to research and construct the parties' arguments.” Draper v. Martin, 664 F.3d 1110, 1114 (7th Cir. 2011). 4 Requests, Defendants shall specifically identify those responsive documents, by Bates number, in their response to each request. To avoid confusion, Plaintiff's original document requests are deemed withdrawn; with the exception of information covered by the ESI Protocol, discussed below, any information that

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PRATER v. ALLIANCE COAL, LLC, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/prater-v-alliance-coal-llc-insd-2023.