Electronic Discovery Law

E.E.O.C. v. Lexus Serramonte, 2006 WL 2329510 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 9, 2006)

In this decision, the court ruled upon plaintiff’s motion to compel defendants to respond to the following:

(1) Interrogatory No. 9 “IDENTIFY each PERSON employed by YOU at YOUR Lexus of Serramonte Facility during the REQUESTED TIME PERIOD providing the following information for each: name, gender, hire date, last date employed if currently laid off, residence addresses, telephone numbers, social security number, and employment position.”; (2) Request No. 17 “An electronic database file, in Quattro Pro readable format, IDENTIFYING YOUR CURRENT employees in the Serramonte Facility including each employees' name, gender, hire date, last date employed if currently laid off, residence addresses, telephone numbers, social security number, and employment position.”; and (3) Request No. 18 “An electronic database file, in Quattro Pro readable format, IDENTIFYING all female employees that worked with or under the supervision of Roderick V. Helaire, Francis Chang, Yan Epshtein and Bob Fraley from 2000 to the present, including each employee's name, hire date, last date employed if currently laid off, residence addresses, telephone numbers, social security number, and employment position.”

Opposing the motion, defendant represented that it “does not have a computer readable data file containing employees' names, addresses, and telephone numbers.”

The court concluded that it was “unduly burdensome to require Defendant to do Plaintiffs' work for them by creating a computer-readable file,” and that it would not order defendant to produce one. However, defendant would be required to provide contact information for any potential class members that it had not yet provided. Accordingly, the court ruled as follows:

Defendants shall respond to Interrogatory No. 9 and Requests for Production of Documents No. 17 and 18. However, the response is modified to records of female employees employed by Defendants from January 2001 through December 2002. Furthermore, if Defendants do not presently maintain their employee contact information in the electronic format requested by Plaintiff, they shall produce it as maintained. If there is no protective order in effect, the parties shall prepare one, modeled on the example on the Court's web site and present it to the Court for approval within five days of the e-filing of this order.