An article by Doug Austin, appearing on the eDiscovery Daily Blog.
This article discusses the case of United States ex rel. King v. Solvay, S.A., No. H-06-2662, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30752 (S.D. Tex. Mar. 5, 2013), in which the court failed to fully grant the plaintiff's request for expanded discovery, and ordered a limited expansion of discovery.
The article states, "Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c)(1), courts can limit discovery to protect parties from undue burden or expense. Judge Miller agreed with the defendant that a few references that conduct was continuing “‘to the present’ in a 267-page complaint containing more than 768 paragraphs does not justify the burden and expense associated with unfettered discovery ‘to the present’ in a case in which discovery is already going to be incredibly expensive and time-consuming.” Although Judge Miller was willing to extend the relevant time frame to include some claims outside of the relators’ personal knowledge because the real party in interest was the United States, he was not willing to go so far as to permit the “generalized claims of ongoing conduct to form the basis for a fishing expedition.” As a result, he granted the motion for a protective order, limiting the time frames for Solvay’s discovery obligations."
In terms of proportionality, the defendant stated, "Moreover, the company argued that it would cost at least $480,000 to process the eMails it was already preserving, and the review of those eMails would cost $2.3 million, excluding quality control, privilege review, and production costs."
