Opinion
1:22-cv-01229-JLT-CDB
09-07-2023
JESSICA E. ALBORNOZ, Plaintiff, v. WAL-MART ASSOCIATES, INC., et al, Defendants.
ORDER OF CLARIFICATION RE: DISCOVERY DISPUTES
(DOC. 60)
Background
On August 30, 2023, the Court entered an order (the “Order”) resolving certain discovery disputes that the parties agreed to submit to the Court for adjudication through the Court's informal discovery dispute procedure. (Doc. 60). Thereafter, on September 5, 2023, counsel for Plaintiff contacted the Court to seek clarification of a discovery issue she indicated had been before the Court but not resolved in its Order. The Court invited the parties to exchange email briefs on the issue, which the parties' completed on September 6, 2023. A copy of the parties' email exchanges with the Court is attached hereto as Exhibit A.
Discussion
The underlying discovery dispute involves Plaintiff's complaint that Defendant impermissibly instructed a deponent to decline to answer Plaintiff's deposition question seeking the deponent's email and cell phone numbers. (Doc. 53 at 3). Plaintiff separately complained that Defendant improperly instructed the deponent to decline to respond to Plaintiff's deposition questioning as to whether he attempted to retrieve certain call records. Id.
At the outset of the informal discovery dispute conference, the parties mutually agreed to resolve one part of this dispute without Court intervention: that Defendant would provide the deponent's contact information to Plaintiff. (Doc. 60 at 2 & n.1). With respect to Plaintiff's separate complaint concerning the deponent's search for call records, the Court ordered Defendant within 21 days of entry of the Order to produce to Plaintiff a signed and sworn declaration in which the deponent attests whether he searched for call records between him and Plaintiff during the relevant time period. Id. at 6, 10.
Plaintiff now complains that the Court “did not rule on one key and highly substantial issue” - to wit, that Plaintiff was unable at the deposition to “inquire about any additional details” regarding the deponent's contact information following Defendant's refusal to provide his email and cell phone numbers, including “which specific number” he used when contacting Plaintiff. See Exhibit A. But that issue was not before the Court in its resolution of the underlying discovery disputes. See generally Doc. 53. Moreover, at the outset of the informal discovery dispute conference, counsel for Plaintiff agreed that the dispute regarding the deponent's contact information had been resolved by mutual agreement with counsel for Defendant. See supra. If counsel was dissatisfied with the nature and scope of that mutual resolution, she should not have agreed to it and confirmed to the Court that the matter was resolved. Further, the Court considers Defendant's response to Plaintiff's present challenge (see Exhibit A) as resolving any remaining uncertainty about the issue: the deponent maintained only one phone number with which he could have contacted Plaintiff during their common period of employment, which number already had been and recently was again provided by Defendant to Plaintiff.
Plaintiff has not sought to reopen the subject deposition and has not brought forth good cause for any such reopening. See, e.g., Acosta v. Austin Elec. Servs. LLC, No. CV-16-02737-PHX-ROS, 2018 WL 5722713, at *1 (D. Ariz. Nov. 1, 2018) (courts will not find good cause to reopen a deposition if the information could be obtained from some other source that is less burdensome, the requesting party could have obtained the information through written discovery or the burden outweighs the likely benefit); Bookhamer v. Sunbeam Products Inc., No. C 09-6027-EMC (DMR), 2012 WL 5188302, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 19, 2012) (same). Since the information Plaintiff seeks already was disclosed through less burdensome means, the Court finds that even if Plaintiff sought to reopen the deposition, she would be unable to demonstrate good cause to grant her request.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
(Exhibit A Omitted)