Wagner v. Dryvit Systems, Inc.

208 F.R.D. 606, 2001 WL 1905575
CourtDistrict Court, D. Nebraska
DecidedAugust 1, 2001
DocketNo. 4:00CV3072
StatusPublished
Cited by33 cases

This text of 208 F.R.D. 606 (Wagner v. Dryvit Systems, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Nebraska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wagner v. Dryvit Systems, Inc., 208 F.R.D. 606, 2001 WL 1905575 (D. Neb. 2001).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

PIESTER, United States Magistrate Judge.

This matter is before the court on plaintiffs “Motion to Compel and Motion for Sanctions to Dryvit Systems, Inc.” (Filing 41) and the Motion for Protective Order filed by Defendant Dryvit Systems, Inc. (Filing 46) For the reasons stated below, I shall grant plaintiffs motion to compel to the extent set forth in this memorandum and order and award plaintiffs their reasonable expenses, including attorney fees, in bringing this motion. I shall deny defendant Dryvit’s Motion for Protective Order requesting the court to deny plaintiffs’ discovery requests and shall order the terms and conditions, including designation of time and place, to be followed by the parties in exchanging the discovery required by this order.

DISCUSSION

Plaintiffs’ Complaint alleges that the plaintiffs’ home was constructed with an exterior insulation finish system (hereinafter referred to as “EIFS”) manufactured by the defendant Dryvit Systems Inc. (hereinafter “Dry-vit”). The plaintiffs allege that this siding system was defective and caused their home to become substantially rotted and contaminated with mold and mildew. The plaintiffs request an award for the damages caused by the alleged defects in the EIFS product.

On July 24, 2000, the plaintiffs served interrogatories and requests for production on Dryvit. On this Motion to Compel, the plaintiffs argue that Defendant’s responses to In[608]*608terrogatory numbers 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21 and 22 and Request for Production numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 15, 16 and 17 were insufficient, incomplete and unresponsive. Consistent with the allegations of plaintiffs’ Complaint, plaintiffs’ discovery requests focus on obtaining information from Dryvit concerning any defects in the EIFS system, knowledge by Dryvit of these defects and the representations made by Dryvit to customers prior to selling them this product. All such information is relevant to the claims presented and can be appropriately requested as discovery in this case. [See, e.g., Baker v. General Motors Corp., 86 F.3d 811 (8th Cir. 1996) (discovery requests were appropriate and failure of manufacturer to produce records regarding customer complaints and similar accidents constituted willful violation of discovery order warranting imposition of sanctions)]

In response to plaintiffs’ motion to compel and in support of its motion for protective order, Dryvit has provided this court with some but not all of the case management orders of Magistrate Judge Alexander Den-son of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, who presides over the consolidated pretrial matters of several federal cases also arising from alleged damage to dwellings caused by the EIFS system. [In Re: Stucco Litigation, master file number 5:96-CV-287-BR(2)] Dryvit is one of the several defendants named in that suit and subject to its proceedings. Under Judge Denson’s April 30, 1996 Case Management Order No. 2, Dryvit was to produce and preserve all documents relevant to damage claims allegedly caused by the use of EIFS systems and generated after January 1, 1985. Judge Denson further specifies seven categories of documents the defendants must produce. These category descriptions are substantially the same as those requested by the plaintiffs in this action. In addition, Dryvit is a defendant in a class action suit also pending in North Carolina entitled Ruff v. Parex, et al. and additional categories of documents responsive to requests for production in the Ruff litigation have been compiled.

Case Management Order No. 2 also references and incorporates an Exhibit C, which describes the document numbering and repository arrangement system approved and ordered by the court. This portion of the Order was not provided to this court by Dryvit but is a matter of court record available for review on this motion to compel. Under that order, all documents are to be Bates-stamped with consecutive numbers and a two-letter prefix to identify the source of the document. The two-letter prefix “DR” is to precede any Bates-stamped number for documents supplied by Dryvit. Exhibit C references fifteen potential sources of documents to be stored in the repository, with each assigned a separate prefix. Pursuant to the Order, as documents are used in the litigation, the parties must maintain a Document Number Log and when a document is actually used in litigation, it is to be assigned a number and with this number, a corresponding reference to its Bates number and a written description of the document.

According to its submission in opposition to plaintiffs’ motion to compel, Dryvit has complied with the Case Management Order in In Re: Stucco Litigation and the discovery requests in Ruff v. Parex. All the re sponsive documents have been stored in a repository and Dryvit has updated the repository on several occasions. This repository now contains “almost every document requested by a typical plaintiffs’ attorney in the EIFS residential eases.” It is located in Raleigh, North Carolina and currently houses 146,832 documents. In other words, in 1996 and on numerous occasions since that time, Dryvit has been able to locate within its business files the categories of records that are being requested in this action.

On September 15, 2000, Dryvit provided a written response to plaintiffs’ discovery in this case. Numerous objections were raised to include claims that the discovery was overly broad, unduly burdensome, vague and ambiguous, requested information protected from discovery as work product or attorney-client privileged information and sought confidential proprietary information and trade secrets. The majority of Dryvit’s discovery responses at issue also include the following [609]*609language: “By way of further response, Dry-vit states that it produced various documents in connection with the matter of Ruff v. Parex, et al, and some of those documents, which are available for review and copying at a mutually convenient time, may be responsive to the general subject matter of this request.” (Interrogatories 16, 17, 20, 21 and 22, Requests for Production 4, 5, 6, 9, 13 15 and 16).

In response, plaintiffs’ counsel traveled to the discovery repository in North Carolina on December 18, 2000 at plaintiffs’ expense. The repository documents were located in four oversized file cabinets with no index provided to plaintiffs’ counsel. The documents were not organized by date, subject matter or in any other way. By example, a letter and the company’s responsive memorandum dated only three days apart were separated by 1500 pieces of paper. Dryvit provided no identification by Bates stamp number of the documents responsive to plaintiffs’ request. Since the repository houses the discovery in In Re: Stucco Litigation and Ruff v. Parex, et al., both of which involve several parties, it is not surprising that the vast majority of documents reviewed by plaintiffs’ counsel had no relevance at all to plaintiffs’ claim against Dryvit. Although Judge Denson’s Case Management Order No. 2 had been issued over four years earlier, no “Document Number Log” to be generated during the litigation under that order was ever provided to plaintiffs’ counsel.

Plaintiffs’ counsel reviewed one-half of the documents before returning to Nebraska and promptly advising counsel for Dryvit that he should not, under the discovery rules, be required to sift through huge volumes of documents to uncover the specific information relevant and responsive to his discovery requests.

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208 F.R.D. 606, 2001 WL 1905575, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wagner-v-dryvit-systems-inc-ned-2001.