For Reliance on Employees’ Self-Selection and Failure to Cooperate, Defendant Ordered to Produce Corporate Designee to Explain Retention Policies, Discovery Methods
Burd v. Ford Motor Co., No. 3:13-cv-20976, 2015 WL 4137915 (S.D. W. Va. July 8, 2015)
In this case, Defendant sought to quash Plaintiffs’ notice of deposition and entry of a protective order precluding Plaintiffs from deposing Defendant’s representative regarding Defendant’s document retention policies and practices and specific methodologies for identifying relevant information in the present case, including Defendant’s admitted reliance on custodian “self-selection.” Citing Plaintiffs’ concerns regarding the sufficiency of Defendant’s discovery efforts and Defendant’s refusal to cooperate and/or to disclose the search terms utilized by its custodians in their search efforts, the court denied Defendant’s requests for protection and ordered the defendant to produce a Rule 30(b)(6) witness to testify regarding “its document retention and destruction polices, and to supply details regarding the document search performed by [Defendant] to date.”