Lyle v. 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc. et al

Filing 34

ORDER DENYING in MOST Part and GRANTING in LIMITED Part 23 Motion to Compel Defendant to Remove Its Objection and Fully Respond to Plaintiff's Interrogatory No. 3 and Request for Production No. 34. Signed by Judge Andrew W. Austin. (jk)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
AUSTIN DIVISION
JADA LYLE, Individually and as Next
Friend of L.T., a Minor Child,

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v.
24 HOUR FITNESS, USA, Inc.

A-14-CA-300 LY

ORDER
Before the Court are Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Defendant to Remove its Objections and
Fully Respond to Plaintiff’s Interrogatory No. 3 and Request for Production No. 34 (Dkt No. 23);
Defendant’s Response in Opposition (Dkt. No. 27); and Plaintiff’s Reply to Response to Motion
(Dkt. No. 29). The District Court referred the above motion to the undersigned Magistrate Judge for
resolution pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §636(b)(1)(A), FED. R. CIV. P. 72, and Rule 1(c) of Appendix C of
the Local Rules of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas,. The Court
held a hearing on the motion on June 17, 2015.
I. GENERAL BACKGROUND
This is a suit by Jada Lyle, individually, and as next friend for her child L.T., against 24 Hour
Fitness, USA, Inc. for injuries sustained by L.T. at a 24 Hour Fitness Facility. As a benefit to
members, in many of its facilities 24 Hour Fitness has a “Kid’s Club,” which provides care for
children while their parents are exercising. On June 28, 2013, Lyle left her daughter, L.T., at the
Kid’s Club while she exercised. Id. While there, L.T. suffered a broken elbow when she fell from
a playscape. On March 11, 2014, Lyle filed suit in Travis County Court at Law No. 2, asserting
claims of negligence, premises liability, and negligent hiring, supervision, training, and retention,
as well as a claim of gross negligence, against 24 Hour Fitness and its manager. Defendants

removed the case to federal court on April 4, 2014, on the basis of diversity. On November 4, 2014,
the Court denied Lyle’s motion to remand, and dismissed the claims against the manager.
On January 26, 2015, Lyle served written discovery on 24 Hour Fitness. The present motion
revolves around two of those requests—one interrogatory and one request for production. The
requests at issue are:
INTERROGATORY NO. 3: Identify all other reports or complaints in the past
seven (7) years, including but not limited to, injury producing claims or alleged injury
producing claims, whether or not a lawsuit was filed, arising out of the care, safety,
entrustment, monitoring, supervision, and/or control of minor children in the child
care facility(ies) operated by Defendant, including, but not limited to incidents of
injuries arising from playscapes. This request does not seek the disclosure of
protected private information of individuals and Plaintiff asks that any protected
private information of individuals be redacted from disclosure.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION NO. 34: Copies of all accident/incident reports
of any and all incidents similar to those complained of in this case for past seven
years (i.e. incidents of minor children injured while on or near the Kids Club
playscape or similar indoor playscape equipment at any 24 Hour Fitness Center).
Dkt. No. 23. at 1-2. 24 Hour Fitness objects to both the time duration of the requests, and their
nationwide scope. After objecting on this basis, 24 Hour Fitness produced responses for the period
of January 1, 2012 to the date of the accident for playscape-related injuries that occurred at the Kid’s
Club location where L.T.’s accident occurred. Dkt. No. 27 at 3.1
After discussions aimed at resolving the objections, Lyle offered to narrow the request to
“other similar incidents [within] 5 years prior to the June 28, 2013 incident,” involving “claims in
which lack of supervision of children in the Defendant’s Kid’s Club (nationwide) resulted in injury
to the child.” Id. This was not agreeable to 24 Hour Fitness, however, which continued to object that
the geographical reach and time period of the requests were overly broad. Thus, Lyle filed a motion
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The only accident during that time was the one involved in this case.
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to compel on May 4, 2015, requesting that 24 Hour Fitness be ordered to fully respond to
Interrogatory No. 3 and Request for Production No. 34. Dkt. No. 23.
II. ANALYSIS
Rule 26 permits discovery “regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s
claim or defense.” FED. R. CIV. P. 26(b)(1). Further, “[r]elevant information need not be admissible
at the trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible
evidence.” Id. The scope of discovery is not without limits, however, and must be proportional to
the size of the case and the likelihood of the discovery producing relevant information. Thus, Rule
26 provides that a court may limit discovery if it determines that “the burden or expense of the
proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit, considering the needs of the case, the amount in
controversy, the parties’ resources, the importance of the issues at stake in the action, and the
importance of the discovery in resolving the issues.” FED. R. CIV. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(iii).
To avoid discovery, a party resisting it must “articulate specifically how [a] discovery request
is not relevant or is overly broad, burdensome, or oppressive.” Export Worldwide, Ltd. Vv. Knight,
241 F.R.D. 259, 263 (W.D. Tex. 2006). 24 Hour Fitness has met this burden here by producing the
declaration of Kyle Irving, who works in the risk management department of 24 Hour Fitness. Dkt.
No. 27-2. His declaration sets out in detail the time and cost that would be involved in responding
to the Lyle’s requests. Lyle has submitted nothing to controvert the declaration, and at the hearing
only argued that the Court should not be concerned about the cost to 24 Hour Fitness to produce
responses because it is a big company. As the Court repeatedly pointed out at the hearing, “the
parties’ resources” is only one of the factors Rule 26(b)(2)(C)(iii) instructs the Court to consider
when deciding if a discovery request is proportionate to the case as a whole. The other factors are
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“the needs of the case, the amount in controversy . . . the importance of the issues at stake in the
action, and the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues.” When the Court asked Lyle
whether she had any information from publically available sources, such as other lawsuits, to suggest
that the requests were likely to produce relevant data, she was unable to point to any.
Further, the relevance of the requested information is marginal. In both her motion and at the
hearing, Lyle argued that the information requested was needed to assess whether 24 Hour Fitness
“breached its duty to inquire into the competence and qualifications of their prospective employees,
and to use ordinary care when overseeing its employees.” Dkt. No. 29 at 7. In particular, Lyle
argued that her gross negligence claim requires proof that 24 Hour Fitness “placed all children in an
extreme degree of risk,” which she contends supports a broad search of 24 Hour Fitness’s injury
records. Id. But as 24 Hour Fitness notes, Lyle’s suit is primarily focused on the actions of the
employees who were overseeing L.T.’s play at the Kid’s Club on the date in question, and whether
accidents occurred at other locations would have no relevance to those causes of action. The best
case Lyle was able to make that the documents might be relevant was based on her gross negligence
claim. But as noted, Lyle has not produced any evidence to suggest that the burdensome search she
is asking 24 Hour Fitness to conduct is likely to produce evidence that 24 Hour Fitness routinely has
accidents in its Kid’s Clubs attributable to unsupervised play, poorly trained employees, or the like.
Instead, she simply contends that the discovery “might” produce such evidence. That is not enough
to counter-balance the expense of compelling 24 Hour Fitness to respond to the requests as written.
Thus, having considered the request, and having conducted the balancing required by Rule
26(b)(2)(C)(iii), the Court will deny in most part Lyle’s motion to compel. It will, however, direct
24 Hour Fitness to produce from three of its locations all records of any injuries that took place in
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the Kid’s Club at those locations for the three years preceding the date of the injury here (June 28,
2013). The locations that 24 Hour Fitness should produce the records from are:
Katy Bella Terra Super Sport
5270 West Grand Parkway South
Richmond, TX 77406
Tysons Corner Super Sport
1500 Cornerside Blvd.
Vienna, VA 22182
Southglenn Super Sport
6839 South Vine Street
Centennial, CO 80122
The Court obtained these locations from 24 Hour Fitness’s website. In the event that any of the
locations have not been operating long enough to have created data for the entire period set forth
above, then the parties are ordered to confer and agree to a substitute location. Finally, if Lyle
believes that the data she receives from these locations support a broader search, she is directed to
confer with 24 Hour Fitness to attempt to reach agreement on that issue, and, failing that, she may
petition the Court for broader discovery on this issue at that time.
III. CONCLUSION
ACCORDINGLY, the Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Defendant to Remove its Objections
and Fully Respond to Plaintiff’s Interrogatory No. 3 and Request for Production No. 34 (Dkt No. 23)
is DENIED except as set forth above.
SIGNED this 24th day of June, 2015.

_____________________________________
ANDREW W. AUSTIN
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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