Driveline Systems, LLC v. Artic Cat, Inc.
Filing
273
ORDER : Plaintiff's motion to determine the sufficiency of answer and objection to request to admit fact no. 24 255 is granted in part and denied in part. Defendant shall issue an updated answer as set out herein by 8/15/2016. [See STATEMENT] Signed by the Honorable Iain D. Johnston on 7/20/2016. Mailed notice (jp, )
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
WESTERN DIVISION
Driveline Systems, LLC,
)
Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant, )
)
v.
)
)
Arctic Cat, Inc.
)
)
Defendant/Counter-Claimant. )
No. 08 CV 50154
Magistrate Judge Iain D. Johnston
ORDER
Plaintiff’s motion to determine the sufficiency of answer and objection to request to
admit fact no. 24 [255] is granted in part and denied in part. Defendant shall issue
an updated answer as set out herein by 8/15/2016.
STATEMENT
This case comes before the Court on a motion by plaintiff to determine the
sufficiency of defendant’s answer to plaintiff’s twenty-fourth request to admit.
Plaintiff’s requests to admit were served pursuant to Rule 36, which states in
relevant part concerning the other party’s responsibility when answering:
(4) Answer. If a matter is not admitted, the answer must specifically
deny it or state in detail why the answering party cannot truthfully
admit or deny it. A denial must fairly respond to the substance of the
matter; and when good faith requires that a party qualify an answer or
deny only a part of a matter, the answer must specify the part
admitted and qualify or deny the rest. The answering party may assert
lack of knowledge or information as a reason for failing to admit or
deny only if the party states that it has made reasonable inquiry and
that the information it knows or can readily obtain is insufficient to
enable it to admit or deny.
(5) Objections. The grounds for objecting to a request must be stated. A
party must not object solely on the ground that the request presents a
genuine issue for trial.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 36(4)-(5). Rule 36’s “function is to define and limit the matters in
controversy between the parties.” 8b Charles Alan Wright, et al., Federal Practice
and Procedure § 2252 (3d ed.). The Rule permits placing a reasonable burden on
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the respondent to discover the truth or falsity of an issue, but a party may reply
that it cannot truthfully admit or deny the matter if discovery would be
unreasonable. Id. at § 2261.
The request at issue here is:
Request No. 24: Admit that the following Bates stamped documents,
attached hereto as Exhibit A, with the exception of Outlook headers on
certain of the e-mails in a form similar to Exhibit B, are true and
accurate copies of e-mails sent by the listed sender on the date listed
thereon and received by the listed recipient(s): [followed by a list of a
few hundred emails].
After boilerplate objections, defendant objected to the bulk of the request on several
specific grounds (both in the answer itself and in the briefing on the instant
motion), each of which the Court will take in turn.
Initially, defendant objects that Request No. 24 is not the twenty-fourth
request, but is, instead, at least either the fifty-second or seventy-fifth request. The
Court notes that this objection was only raised in the briefing to this Court, not as
an objection in defendant’s answer to the requests to admit. This typically results
in waiver of the objection. See id. at § 2262 (“Objections must be made in writing
within the time allowed for answering the request. If some requests are to be
answered and others objected to, the answers and objections should be contained in
a single document. A party who thinks a request improper is required to object
thereto and to state the reasons for its objection. Failure to object to a request
waives the objection.” (footnotes omitted)). Here, defendant provides no basis to
overlook its waiver, and therefore the issue is waived. Even if it were not, the Court
is unconvinced. Defendant argues that the number of requests to admit is
important because this Court limited requests to admit to fifty, and so plaintiff has
allegedly exceeded this Court’s allowed requests. Defendant arrives at the inflated
numbers by splitting previous requests to admit, and Request No. 24, into multiple
requests because those requests seek authentication of more than one document or
category of documents. The use of a single request to admit the authentication of
large groups of documents is commonplace and a useful way to avoid authentication
and hearsay squabbles during trial. See In re Peregrine Fin. Grp. Customer Litig.,
No. 12 C 5546, 2015 WL 1344466, at *8 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 20, 2015). Any time or effort
savings in this case may have been rendered academic by the parties’ surprising
need for this Court to adjudicate the instant motion, but nevertheless the practice
itself is not out-of-line with normal practice under Rule 36.
Defendant also objected that the term “received” is not defined in the request
to admit. Defendant complains that the word “received” could mean “received” the
email or “received and reviewed” the email. Since the word “reviewed” is not
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present, however, the intention of the drafter in using the word “received” is clear—
if the drafter had wanted to know about receipt and review, he or she would likely
have asked. This objection too is overruled.
Next, defendant objected that some of the documents attached were not
emails at all or were emails from plaintiff’s counsel to her assistant, and thus were
not within the scope of the request. Plaintiff, in its motion, does not address those
objections or documents. Having reviewed the referenced documents, the Court
concurs with that objection as it relates to the emails from plaintiff’s counsel to her
assistant and defendant’s answer as to those documents is sufficient. However, the
other identified documents are all exhibits to the emails and thus make up part of
the content of the emails. Thus, and defendant’s answer as to those documents is
insufficient.
Finally, the bulk of defendant’s answer is that it cannot readily ascertain the
truth or falsity of the emails because investigating whether each of the potentially
hundreds of recipients “received” each email with that specific content on the date
in question would be impossible, particularly given that some of the senders and
recipients were not employees of defendant or are no longer employees of defendant.
In part, the Court concurs. Specifically, it is outside the realm of reasonable
investigation for defendant to determine the truth of the receipt date of emails for
individuals who were never employees of defendant (some of whom were, in fact,
employees of plaintiff).
However, the bulk of the answer is insufficient.
Defendant’s argument is based on the premise that it must ask every single sender
and recipient individually about each email, both the date of reception and the
content, and that the age of the emails (most at or over a decade old) would make
that process futile and incredibly burdensome. However, that premise is flawed—
the emails in question were turned over from backup copies of data from defendant.
Defendant has not argued that its backup data has been tampered with or is in any
way unreliable. Defendant can relatively easily compare the data in its possession
to the emails offered by plaintiff to determine if the sender, recipient lists, content,
and date of receipt (again, not review, since that is not part of the request) for those
senders and recipients who worked for defendant—and thus all the relevant data
would be and always has been within defendant’s control—are accurate. For that
reason, the answer is insufficient and defendant must submit a revised answer
pursuant to this ruling by August 15, 2016.
Date: 7/20/2016
______________________________
Iain D. Johnston, Magistrate Judge
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