Childers v. General Motors Company LLC

Filing 40

ORDER STAYING 37 Order on Motion to Compel--Signed by Magistrate Judge Anthony P. Patti. (MWil)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
DENISE CHILDERS,
Plaintiff,
v.

Case No. 2:16-cv-14428
District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds
Magistrate Judge Anthony P. Patti

GENERAL MOTORS LLC,
Defendant.
_________________________/
ORDER STAYING ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN
PART PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL (DE 37) PENDING THE
COURT’S RULING ON PLAINTIFF’S OBJECTIONS TO ORDER
GRANTING MOTION FOR ENTRY OF A PROTECTIVE ORDER (DE 38)
On September 26, 2017, the Court entered an Order granting Defendant’s
motion for entry of a protective order. (DE 35.) On October 4, 2017, Plaintiff’s
motion to compel Defendant to provide complete answers to interrogatories and
produce documents (DE 26) came before this Court for a hearing. At that hearing,
the parties engaged in a final meet and confer conference and then placed a
stipulation on the record as to the matters they had resolved that had been the
subject of Plaintiff’s motion. The Court also made findings on the record
regarding the remaining, unresolved matters, and issued an Order on October 5,
2017 granting in part and denying in part Plaintiff’s motion to compel and ordering
Defendant to supplement its responses and produce additional documents by

certain deadlines. (DE 37.) On October 10, 2017, Plaintiff filed objections to the
September 26, 2017 Order granting Defendant’s motion for entry of a protective
order. (See DE 38, objecting to DE 35.)
At the request of the parties, I conducted a telephone conference call with
their counsel on October 11, 2017 to address the implications of Plaintiff’s
objections (DE 38) on the deadlines set forth in the Court’s Order on Plaintiff’s
motion to compel and the stipulations which were incorporated within that Order
by reference. (DE 37.) Defendant seeks a stay of the Court’s Order on Plaintiff’s
motion to compel, pending the Court’s ruling on Plaintiff’s objections, stating that
it entered into stipulations on the record and agreed to set deadlines based on the
existence of the Protective Order. Plaintiff opposes a stay, and states that she is
only requesting that a factual finding be corrected and that the Protective Order be
modified so that documents obtained by Plaintiff prior to this litigation outside of
the discovery process may not be marked confidential under the Protective Order.
It is not clear whether the Court would set aside the Protective Order or
simply modify it if the Plaintiff’s objections are sustained. However, it is clear that
Defendant relied on the existence of the Protective Order in its present form in
entering into the extensive stipulations on the record with regard to the outstanding
discovery, promising to produce various items pursuant to that Order, as written. It
is unlikely that Defendant would have agreed to the substance of these stipulations

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or the timing of the production deadlines established by the stipulations if it had
known that Plaintiff intended to challenge the existing Protective Order, including
its language regarding Defendant’s ability to designate documents produced by
Plaintiff as confidential. By entering into extensive stipulations regarding
discovery on the record at the hearing and by framing the narrow issues which the
Court addressed in DE 37, without alerting either Defendant or the Court that the
scope and effect of the Protective Order was being challenged, Plaintiff was
crossing her proverbial fingers on a hand which was hidden from view.
In the absence of a new stipulation from the parties regarding the production
of documents pursuant to the Protective Order pending the Court’s ruling on
Plaintiff’s objections, Defendant’s obligations under the stipulations placed on the
record and as reflected in the Order on Plaintiff’s motion to compel (DE 37) are
hereby STAYED, with a new scope and/or schedule to be revisited after the Court
has ruled on the pending objections in DE 38. Notwithstanding the stay on
Defendant’s obligation to produce discovery materials to Plaintiff, Defendant is not
absolved of its obligation to continue to collect and prepare the materials which
were previously ordered or agreed to be produced by the stipulations, so that these
materials are capable of being produced soon after resolution of Plaintiff’s
objections. The deadline for agreeing upon applicable search terms (see DE 37 at
3, ¶ 3) is hereby extended by one week to October 19, 2017.

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IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: October 11, 2017

s/Anthony P. Patti
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

Certificate of Service
I hereby certify that a copy of the foregoing document was sent to parties of record
on October 11, 2017, electronically and/or by U.S. Mail.
s/Michael Williams
Case Manager for the
Honorable Anthony P. Patti

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