Williams v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company

Filing 54

RULING denying 41 Motion to Compel Discovery. Pursuant to Rule 37(a)(5)(B), the plaintiff shall pay to the defendant, within 14 days, reasonable expenses in the amount of $500.00. Signed by Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Riedlinger on 9/8/2015. (BCL)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

ALLEN WILLIAMS
CIVIL ACTION
VERSUS
NUMBER 14-382-JWD-SCR
E.I. DUPONT DE NEMOURS AND
COMPANY
RULING ON MOTION TO COMPEL DISCOVERY
Before the court is the Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Discovery
filed by plaintiff Allen Williams. Record document number 41. The
motion is opposed.1
Plaintiff filed a Complaint against defendant E.I. du Pont de
Nemours

and

Company

asserting

claims

of

discrimination

and

retaliation in violation of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq.,
and 42 U.S.C. §1981 which occurred while he was employed at the
defendant’s plant in Burnside, Louisiana.

Plaintiff alleged that

his supervisors at the plant regularly committed discriminatory
practices and retaliated against him for reporting these practices
to the company’s human resources department.
In the initial motion to compel discovery the plaintiff
asserted

that defendant failed to provided complete responses to

Interrogatory Nos. 3-7 and Request for Production of Documents Nos.
18-27 of its first set of discovery requests propounded on March 2,

1

Record document number 44. Plaintiff filed a reply. Record
document number 47. Defendant filed a sur-reply. Record document
number 50.

2015. Defendant asserted that it has provided the plaintiff with
all relevant and responsive material.
Plaintiff’s motion is resolved as follows.
In Interrogatory Nos. 3-7, the plaintiff sought comparative
employment information regarding Caucasian and African American
employees

at

the

Burnside

plant

from

2002

to

the

present.

Plaintiff argued that this information will demonstrate that the
adverse employment actions taken against the plaintiff by the
defendant were motivated by the defendant’s desire to treat African
American

employees

less

favorably

than

Caucasian

employees.

Plaintiff also argued that the requested information will show to
what

extent

the

defendant

imposed

disciplinary

actions

upon

Caucasian employees at the Burnside plant.
After the parties filed their memoranda, the district judge
ruled on July 8, 2015 that the “Plaintiff’s [42 U.S.C.] § 1981
claims that are prior to June 20, 2010 are time barred by the four
statute of limitations under 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a),” and that his
“Title VII claims that are prior to 2010 are not actionable as
discrete

discriminatory

acts

because

Plaintiff

failed

to

administratively exhaust these claims.”2

2

Record document number 51, Ruling and Order, p. 51. Nothing
in the record indicates that after the ruling the plaintiff
withdrew any aspect of his motion. The ruling also provided that,
“to the extent that DuPont’s motion was intended to reach a hostile
work environment claim, DuPont is granted leave to file a motion to
dismiss on this issue.” Du Pont subsequently filed a motion to
(continued...)
2

Plaintiff has not demonstrated that these interrogatories seek
relevant information, or at least information reasonably calculated
to lead to admissible evidence.

As a whole, these interrogatories

either

the

have

no

relevance

to

plaintiff’s

discrimination/

retaliation claims and/or their scope is entirely too broad in
terms of subject matter and time period.

Interrogatory Number 3

sought the number of Caucasians and African Americans employed each
year at the Burnside facility.

Plaintiff failed to provide any

substantive authority supporting

his request for such information

and to persuasively explain how such information is relevant to his
individual discrimination claims.

A supplemental response to

Interrogatory Nos. 4-7 is also unwarranted.

These discovery

requests sought the identification of all promotions of Caucasians
and African Americans employees and all involuntary terminations of
Caucasians and African Americans operators and employees.

The

relevance of favorable treatment of employees outside the protected
class is limited to those who were similarly situated to the
plaintiff.

It is generally recognized that other claims of

discrimination against an employer are relevant to a discrimination
claim if limited to the (a) same form of discrimination, (b) the
same department or agency where plaintiff worked, and (c) a

2

(...continued)
dismiss. Record document number 52, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and
Company’s Motion to Dismiss Hostile Work Environment Claims Under
Rule 12(b)(6).
3

reasonable time before and after the discrimination occurred.3
Plaintiff did not alleged that he was denied a promotion or
terminated.

Because these discovery requests are not limited to

adverse employment actions similar to those allegedly suffered by
the plaintiff (i.e. being written up for violating a truck loading
procedure, loss of pay for two hours, and being required to take
vacation time when he missed work), the information sought is not
relevant to his claims.

Plaintiff’s argument that the requested

information will show the defendant’s general practice of treating
African American employees less favorably than Caucasian employees
does not entitle the plaintiff to conduct a fishing expedition in
the

hope

of

finding

similarly

situated

employees

who

were

discriminated against or were treated differently.
In Request for Production Nos. 18-27, the plaintiff sought
information

regarding

incidents

and

discipline

Caucasian employees at the Burnside facility.

for

certain

With respect to

Request Number 18, the defendant argued that there is no evidence
or allegation that the plaintiff was disciplined in any way for
violating a lock, tag and try procedure.

Defendant also objected

to production of documents for Request Numbers 19-27 regarding Wade
Miller, George Valentine and Ivy Alberes because the incidents

3

Willis v. U.S., No. 11–708, 2012 WL 5472032, at 1 n. 6
(M.D.La. Nov. 9, 2012), see also, Minnis v. Board of Sup’rs of
Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College, et
al., No. 13-5, 2013 WL 6271940 (M.D. La. Dec. 4, 2013).
4

occurred prior to the plaintiff’s alleged claims of discrimination.
Defendant also argued that none of the incidents identified in
these requests were substantially similar to those for which the
plaintiff was disciplined.
Even assuming the violations identified in these requests were
comparable to the violation alleged in the complaint, the plaintiff
has not shown that these individuals were similarly situated to the
plaintiff at the time the violations occurred or that the incidents
occurred within a reasonable time period from the plaintiff’s first
disciplinary action on April 6, 2010.4

The cases relied on by the

plaintiff are factually distinguishable and do not negate limiting
discovery to circumstances involving similarly situated employees.
In

his

reply

memorandum,

the

plaintiff

also

sought

supplemental answers to Interrogatory Nos. 6-7 and a supplemental
responses to Request for Production Nos. 40, 42 and 43.

Because

issues with these discovery requests were not included in the
motion and initial supporting memorandum but were included in a
supplemental memorandum filed after the fact discovery deadline
expired, as to these discovery requests the motion is untimely.5
Plaintiff also requested supplemental depositions of Tom
Miller and Elizabeth Cromwell, to be taken if needed after the

4

Record document number 1, Complaint, ¶ 36.

5

Record document number 28, Amended Scheduling Order.
discovery concluded on April 10, 2015.
5

Fact

defendant’s

supplemental

production.

Plaintiff

subsequently

limited his request to issues raised by metadata for document
DAW00079-81, which was produced by the defendant on June 3, 2015.
Defendant did not oppose this request.
This aspect of the motion is moot.

The parties may take

supplemental depositions of these persons, limited to questions
about the metadata for document DAW00079-81, at such time as may be
convenient to the parties and deponents.
Under Rule 37(a)(5)(B), if a motion to compel discovery is
denied, the court must require the moving party or its attorney or
both to pay the party who opposed the motion its reasonable
expenses incurred in opposing the motion unless the motion was
substantially justified or other circumstances make an award of
expenses unjust.
One aspect of the plaintiff’s motion is moot, but overall the
motion was not substantially justified.

The discovery requests at

issue were overbroad and unreasonable.

Defendant did not submit

anything to establish a specific amount of expenses incurred in
opposing motion.

A review of the motion papers supports finding

that an award of $500.00 is reasonable.
Accordingly, Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Discovery is denied.
Pursuant to Rule 37(a)(5)(B), the plaintiff shall pay to the

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defendant, within 14 days, reasonable expenses in the amount of
$500.00.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, September 8, 2015.

STEPHEN C. RIEDLINGER
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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