Four General Principles Governing Document Requests and Objections

In Powell-Hatcher v. Wal-Mart Stores East, LP, 2025 WL 3722385 (E.D. Mich. Dec. 23, 2025), the court stated several general principles governing requests to produce documents and objections to those requests. The decision was issued in the context of a motion to compel.

First, parties must address the relevance of each request to a specific claim or defense and the proportionality factors under Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1).  “The Court will reject any argument that relies on the language of Rule 26(b)(1) before it was amended in 2015 or caselaw that interprets that outdated language.”  Id. at *1. Obviously, that guidance is based on the extensive December 2015 amendments to the Rule.

Second, “[a] party requesting documents must describe each request with reasonable particularity. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(1)(A). A document request should not call on the producing party to engage in a subjective guessing game of whether a document is responsive…. Courts have long condemned omnibus ‘any and all’ document requests.” Id. (cleaned up).

Third, “[t]he rules also require objections to interrogatories and requests for production of documents to be made with specificity. Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(4) & 34(b)(2). A party objecting to a request for production of documents as burdensome must support that objection with affidavits, other evidence, or enough information to allow the Court to make a common-sense judgment…. The responding party is also warned, ‘Boilerplate objections are legally meaningless and amount to a waiver of an objection.’ And ‘a party cannot cloak its answers in without-waiving objections.’…. In other words, ‘[a] party either objects to production or produces. If it produces, the objections are generally deemed waived.’” Id. at *2 (cleaned up).

Fourth:

The Court will not tolerate a party unilaterally and unreasonably deciding that requested discovery is not relevant or discoverable under proportionality based solely on its own litigation position. See Lucas v. Protective Life Ins. Co., No. CIV.A.4:08CV00059-JH, 2010 WL 569743, at *3 (W.D. Ky. Feb. 11, 2010) (rejecting argument that underwriting materials were not discoverable based upon the insurer’s “unilateral decision that these other guidelines are not relevant to the claims and defenses in this action”); Johnson v. Serenity Transp., Inc., No. 15-CV-02004-JSC, 2016 WL 6393521, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 28, 2016) (“A party cannot unilaterally decide that there has been enough discovery on a given topic.”).

Id. (emphasis added).

In Johnson, the court wrote: “But, as explained above, absent a showing of burden—and SCI has made none—it does not have discretion to decide to withhold relevant documents.” Johnson v. Serenity Transportation, Inc., 2016 WL 6393521, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 28, 2016).

In Lucas, the defendant claimed it produced all documents relevant to its defense.  Lucas v. Protective Life Ins. Co., 2010 WL 569743, at *3 (W.D. Ky. Feb. 11, 2010).  However, it admitted that “it has not produced all life insurance guidelines, just those that are relevant to its defenses.”  The Lucas court wrote: “In other words, other Chase guidelines relevant to life insurance underwriting exist, but Protective Life has made the unilateral decision that these other guidelines are not relevant to the claims and defenses in this action.”  Id. (emphasis added).

These principles are oft-stated. “The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has explained that Rule 26(b)(1) does not give any party ‘the unilateral ability to dictate the scope of discovery based on their own view of the parties’ respective theories of the case,’ because ‘litigation in general and discovery in particular … are not one sided.’”  Liguria Foods, Inc. v. Griffith Lab’ys, Inc., 320 F.R.D. 168, 183 (N.D. Iowa 2017)(citation omitted; cleaned up).