Najarian Holdings LLC v. CoreVest American Finance Lender LLC ( 2021 )

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 NAJARIAN HOLDINGS LLC, et al., Case No. 20-cv-00799-PJH 8 Plaintiffs, 9 v. DISCOVERY ORDER 10 COREVEST AMERICAN FINANCE Re: Dkt. No. 68 LENDER LLC, 11 Defendant. 12 13 14 Before the court is a joint discovery letter brief, submitted in conformance with this 15 court’s standing order, regarding a dispute among the parties concerning plaintiffs’ 16 production of documents. Defendant asks the court to compel plaintiff to produce all 17 documents responsive to its requests, and to produce documents in a reasonably usable 18 form. Plaintiffs resist, contesting that they have reasonably complied with their burden of 19 production. 20 I. Relevant Background 21 On July 29, 2020, CoreVest propounded its first set of document requests to 22 plaintiffs. Though plaintiffs produced documents in response to those requests (at least 23 22 emails were sent without corresponding attachments by defendant’s count), plaintiffs 24 failed to produce attachments to numerous e-mail communications, and plaintiffs had not 25 produced documents in a “reasonably usable” form as required by Rule 34(b)(2)(E) of the 26 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The format of plaintiffs’ production made accurate 27 electronic searching of those documents difficult and unreliable. 1 twice in June 2021, but defendant reports that the production of documents still has not 2 been remedied. As noted by defendant, the close of fact discovery is August 16, 2021. 3 II. Legal Standard 4 Rule 34(b)(2)(E)(i) requires that, unless otherwise stipulated or ordered by the 5 court, “[a] party must produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of 6 business or must organize and label them to correspond to the categories in the request.” 7 Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(E)(i); see also City of Colton v. American Promotional Events, 8 Inc., 277 F.R.D. 583, 585 (C.D. Cal. 2011) (“[I]t is clear that parties are entitled under the 9 Federal Rules to rationally organized productions so that they may readily identify 10 documents, including ESI, that are responsive to their production requests.”). 11 III. Discussion 12 Based on the parties’ representations, plaintiffs have not provided the ESI in a 13 reasonably usable form, as required by Rule 34(b)(2)(E)(ii). In contrast to plaintiffs’ 14 argument, it is not unreasonable to expect production of emails and attachments in such 15 a way as to identify which attachments correspond to which email messages. Plaintiffs 16 make no argument regarding the burden or expense of producing documents in a 17 searchable form. Nor do they note their efforts to ensure production of email attachments 18 additionally responsive to defendant’s request. 19 IV. Conclusion 20 For the reasons stated above, the court ORDERS plaintiffs to cure the problems 21 with their previous productions by re-producing all of their documents by 11:59 PM on 22 August 13, 2021.1 Plaintiffs must re-produce all e-mail communications and all 23 attachments thereto, and they must do so as families—i.e., with the attachments 24 following the e-mails so that defendant can ascertain which e-mail a particular document 25 was attached to. Plaintiffs must re-produce all electronically stored information as digital 26 files, in a reasonably usable manner and in a manner that retains any available metadata. 27 1 IT IS SO ORDERED. 2 Dated: August 2, 2021 3 /s/ Phyllis J. Hamilton PHYLLIS J. HAMILTON 4 United States District Judge 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27