Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_17-cv-01436/USCOURTS-casd-3_17-cv-01436-17/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 470
Nature of Suit: Civil (Rico)
Cause of Action: 28:1331ra Fed. Question: Racketeering (RICO) Act

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

WILLIAMS & COCHRANE, LLP, et al.,

Plaintiffs,

v.

QUECHAN TRIBE OF THE FORT YUMA 

INDIAN RESERVATION, et al.,

Defendants.

AND ALL RELATED COUNTER CLAIMS

Case No.: 17cv1436-GPC (MSB)

ORDER RE: WILLIAMS & COCHRANE 

AND ROSETTE DEFENDANTS’ JOINT 

MOTION FOR DETERMINATION OF 

DISCOVERY DISPUTE [ECF NO. 297]

On May 5, 2020, Plaintiff Williams & Cochrane, LLP (“W&C” or “Plaintiff”) and

Defendant and Counter Claimant the Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian 

Reservation (“the Tribe”) filed a joint motion to address W&C’s dissatisfaction with the 

Tribe’s objections and responses to W&C’s second set of interrogatories. (ECF No. 297.) 

The Court finds this motion suitable for resolution on the pleadings and without oral 

argument. See CivLR 7.1(d)(1).

I. LEGAL STANDARD

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure authorize parties to obtain discovery 

regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any claim or defense and 

proportional to the needs of the case, “considering the importance of the issues at stake 

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in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant 

information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the 

issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its 

likely benefit.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Relevant information need not be admissible at 

trial to be discoverable. Id. District courts have broad discretion to determine relevancy 

for discovery purposes. See Hallett v. Morgan, 296 F.3d 732, 751 (9th Cir. 2002). 

Similarly, district courts have broad discretion to limit discovery where the discovery 

sought is “unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or can be obtained from some other 

source that is more convenient, less burdensome, or less expensive”; the requesting 

party has had ample opportunity to obtain discovery; or the discovery sought is beyond 

the scope of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1). Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C). 

An interrogatory may relate to any matter that may be inquired of under Rule 

26(b). Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(a)(2). The responding party must answer each interrogatory by 

stating the appropriate objection(s) with specificity or, to the extent the interrogatory is 

not objected to, by “answer[ing] separately and fully in writing under oath.” Id. at 33(b). 

The responding party has the option in certain circumstances to answer an interrogatory 

by specifying responsive records and making those records available to the interrogating 

party. Id. at 33(d). 

II. DISCUSSION

The interrogatories at-issue in this dispute request specific information regarding

“email accounts used by all QUECHAN Tribal Council members who held office from 

September 1, 2016 through June 26, 2017 [(“Tribal Accounts”)] to send or receive any 

emails on behalf of QUECHAN.” (See ECF No. 297 at 2 (quoting Interrogatory No. 1, 

whose response is not subject of the instant dispute, because the disputed 

“interrogatories all reference or build” from it).) Regarding the Tribal Accounts, Plaintiff 

seeks two basic types of information: (1) which accounts were accessible and reviewed 

by the Tribe for responsive documents pursuant to the Plaintiff’s Requests for 

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Production (RFPs), and (2) how the Tribe conducted its search for responsive 

documents. 

It appears that this set of interrogatories was born from an exchange between 

counsel during a meet and confer call, which led Plaintiff’s counsel to believe that 

certain email accounts that might have sent or received relevant emails were no longer 

accessible and not included in the Tribe’s document production. (See ECF No. 297-1 at 

2-3.1) Through the Tribe’s responses to the interrogatories here at-issue, it has been 

confirmed that 

The Tribe’s email exchange server stores data for active email addresses but 

does not archive emails once an email address has been deactivated. 

Pursuant to the Tribe’s routine data management procedures, the 

personalized email addresses based on Tribal Councilmember’s names are 

deactivated when Councilmembers leave office. When this occurs, email 

associated with those personalized email addresses are not preserved on the 

email exchange server. For example, when former Councilmembers 

Montague, Comet, and Uribe left office in March 2017—long before this 

litigation was anticipated—the email addresses 

j.montague@quechanttribe.com, j.comet@quechantribe.com, and 

c.uribe@quechantribe.com, were deactivated and their email data was not 

preserved on the email exchange server. Additionally, when a Tribal 

Councilmember leaves office, his or her Microsoft Surface Tablet issued by 

the Tribe for Tribal Council business, including for sending and receiving 

emails on behalf of the Tribe, is restored to factory default settings in order 

to reissue those devices to incoming Councilmembers.” 

(ECF No. 297 at 8-9.)

Before addressing the specific issues and objections briefed in the motion, the 

Court will address recurrent arguments from the instant motion. Generally, Plaintiff 

contends that the information it now seeks regarding “potential spoliation issues” 

should have been provided in response to Plaintiff’s October 10, 2019 first requests for 

 

1 The Court notes that this background explanation provided by Plaintiff is not supported by 

declarations or other admissible evidence, but nevertheless notes Plaintiff’s assertion for context. This 

topic was discussed by counsel at the April 16, 2020 Discovery Hearing. 

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production (“RFPs”), which instructed the Tribe that “if any document falling under 

these requests ‘once existed, but has been lost, destroyed, no longer exists, or is no 

longer in the possession, custody, or control of Quechan’ that [the Tribe] must ‘identify 

each such document and separately state the details concerning the loss or destruction 

of the document . . . .” (Id. at 2; see also ECF No. 297-3 at 8, ECF No. 297-4 at 8.) 

Because of this, Plaintiff asserts that the Tribe has waived any right to object to the 

current interrogatories. (ECF No. 297-1 at 6.) However, Plaintiff cites no authority for 

this position. Even if the Court agreed that a failure to follow Plaintiff’s own instructions 

amounted to a waiver, Plaintiff fails to demonstrate to the Court at this time that the 

Tribe was aware of any responsive documents that no longer existed to trigger the 

instruction. Therefore, the Court finds the Tribe did not waive its objections to the 

instant interrogatories as Plaintiff claims. 

In support of its interrogatories, Plaintiff contends that the information it seeks is 

necessary to understand why the Tribe has produced only six emails from twelve tribal 

council members for the nine-month period that Plaintiff represented the Tribe, and 

what criteria the Tribe used to isolate the produced documents. (ECF No. 297-1 at 3-5.) 

The Tribe takes issue with Plaintiff’s representation that the Tribe has only produced six 

emails from the Tribal Accounts, and explains that for the period that Plaintiff 

represented the Tribe, the Tribe produced approximately 237 emails and attachments 

that were sent or received by council members, 133 emails and attachments sent or

received by the tribal council secretary, 189 emails and attachments sent or received by 

the executive secretary, and 80 emails and attachments sent to or received by Charles 

Montague. (ECF No. 297-6 at 3-4; see also ECF No. 297-7 at 3.) The Tribe points to 

Plaintiff’s counsel’s declaration to explain the discrepancy, wherein she explains that 

she “‘did not include emails to or from [W&C] or emails that were already copied to 

[W&C] during its representation of the Tribe,’ as well as emails that, in W&C’s

estimation ‘did not contain any or much substance.’” (ECF No. 297-6 at 4 (emphasis in 

original, citing ECF No. 297-2 at 2-3).) 

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A witness from the Tribe, who served on the Tribal Council continuously from 

2015 to May 18, 2017, when he assumed his current position of Vice President of the 

Tribe, explained in his declaration that “email is not, and has not been, the primary 

method of communication between and among members of the Tribal Council” and 

“email was not frequently used by members of the Tribal Council to communicate with 

other members of the Tribal Council.” (ECF No. 297-9 at 2.) Plaintiff argues that “the 

veracity of this statement is completely undercut by the fact that [the Tribe’s] privilege 

log details twelve emails (i.e. more than six) between the Quechan Tribal Council and 

another attorney . . . on June 1, 2017.” (ECF No. 297 at 5.) The Court does not see how 

Plaintiff’s example undermines the Trial Council Vice President’s statement. In the first 

instance, whether the Tribe exchanged emails with its attorneys is irrelevant to the issue 

of whether Tribal Councilmembers used email to discuss issues between themselves. 

Presumably, that is why Plaintiff excluded the emails between the Tribe and Plaintiff 

from its appraisal of the Tribe’s email production to date, as previously discussed. 

Nevertheless, the Court agrees with the Tribe that Plaintiff’s selectively narrow 

interpretation of the discovery to date is not helpful to the Court’s appraisal of this 

dispute. 

A. Adequacy of Meet and Confer

At the outset, the Tribe argues that this motion should be denied because W&C 

did not meet and confer regarding the Tribe’s Amended Responses prior to filing the 

instant motion. (ECF No. 297-6 at 2.) Specifically, counsel for the Tribe says that on 

April 15, 2020, he met and conferred with Plaintiff’s counsel regarding the Tribe’s April 

13, 2020 responses to Plaintiff’s Second Set of Interrogatories and agreed to amend the 

Tribe’s interrogatory responses. (ECF No. 297-7 at 2.) On April 29, 2020, Counsel for the 

Tribe served its Amended Objections and Responses. (Id.) Without requesting to meet 

and confer regarding the Tribe’s amended responses, Plaintiff’s counsel sent Plaintiff’s 

portion of the instant motion to counsel for the Tribe. (Id.) Plaintiff essentially 

concedes that there was no meet and confer subsequent to the Tribe’s amended 

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responses, stating “the parties met about all of [W&C’s] interrogatories on Wednesday, 

April 29, 2020,2 and counsel for Quechan either refused to amend the responses (as was 

the case with interrogatory number two) or amended in such a way that did not address 

[W&C’s] concerns in any manner (as was the case with interrogatory numbers three 

through five, the responses for the latter two of which simply ended up citing to 

Quechan’s production of documents for a response).” (ECF No. 297 at 5-6, 11, 18, 22

(emphasis in original).) Plaintiff refers to the entire history of discovery in this case, 

claiming that because Plaintiff and the Tribe have had conflicts about the sufficiency of 

the Tribe’s document production for more than six months, the Tribe’s claim that 

Plaintiff failed to meet and confer “is preposterous.” (Id.) 

Several different rules require litigants in this district to meet and confer 

regarding discovery disputes before calling upon the Court to resolve the parties’ 

disagreements. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(1) provides that a party filing a 

motion to compel must certify “that the movant has in good faith conferred or 

attempted to confer with the person or party failing to make disclosure or discovery in 

an effort to obtain it without court action.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(1). This Court’s October 

9, 2019 Scheduling Order Regulating Discovery and Other Pre-Trial Proceedings directed 

counsel to “promptly and in good faith meet and confer with regard to all discovery 

disputes in compliance with Local Rule 26.1(a).” (ECF No. 232 at 3.) The same 

requirement is reiterated in Judge Berg’s Civil Chambers Rule IV.A. Civil Local Rule 

26.1(a) states that “[t]he Court will entertain no motion pursuant to Rules 26 through 

37, Fed. R. Civ. P., unless counsel will have previously met and conferred concerning all

disputed issues. . . . If counsel have offices in the same county, they are to meet and 

 

2 The Court notes that the parties submit that the sole meet and confer occurred on different dates, 

and that the Tribe’s contention is supported by the declaration of counsel, while Plaintiff’s is not. 

Nevertheless, because both parties’ statements indicate that the meet and confer preceded the Tribe’s 

amended responses, the Court need not resolve this factual dispute to address the sufficiency of the 

meet and confer for purposes of this motion. 

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confer in person. If counsel have offices in different counties, they are to confer by 

telephone. Under no circumstances may the parties satisfy the meet and confer 

requirement by exchanging written correspondence.” S.D. Cal. Civ. L.R. 26.1(a).

The purpose of a meet and confer requirement is for the parties to engage in a 

meaningful dialogue about their respective positions on disputed issues to see whether 

they can resolve them without court intervention, saving time and money for the 

litigants and the court system. See California v. Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, No. 

14CV2724 AJB (NLS), 2015 WL 2449527, at *6 (S.D. Cal. May 22, 2015) (“A purpose of a 

meet and confer requirement is to resolve issues without the need for further action.”); 

Eusse v. Vitela, Case No.: 3:13-cv-00916-BEN-NLS, 2015 WL 9008634, at *3 (S.D. Cal. 

Dec. 14, 2015) (“This process, when successful, ‘obviates the need for unnecessary 

motion practice, which, in turn, conserves both the Court’s and the parties' resources.’”) 

(internal citation omitted). To “serve [this] purpose, parties must ‘treat the informal 

negotiation process as a substitute for, and not simply a formal prerequisite to, judicial

review of discovery disputes.’” U-Haul Co. of Nevada v. Gregory J. Kamer, Ltd., No. 2:12-

cv-00231-KJD-CWH, 2013 WL 5278523, at *2 (D. Nev. Sept. 17, 2013) (internal citation 

omitted). 

The Court finds that Plaintiff’s admitted failure to meet and confer after receiving 

the Tribe’s amended interrogatory responses ran afoul of the Court’s meet and confer 

requirement. While it would be reasonable to deny the instant motions based on this 

failure, see, e.g., Rogers v. Giurbino, 288 F.R.D. 469, 477 (S.D. Cal. 2012) (“A court can 

deny a motion to compel solely because of a party's failure to meet and confer prior to 

filing the motion.”), the Court will instead reach the parties’ other arguments. 

B. Interrogatory No. 2

Interrogatory number two asks the Tribe to, “[f]or each e-mail account identified 

in response to Interrogatory Number 1, identify the number of e-mails sent from and 

received by each account on a daily basis from the latter of the date of creation 

identified in Interrogatory Number 1 or September 1, 2016 to August 31, 2017.” (ECF 

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No. 297 at 2.) The Tribe objected, claiming the interrogatory was overbroad, unduly 

burdensome, sought irrelevant information, and contained multiple discrete subparts. 

(Id. at 2-9.) Subject to these objections, the Tribe explained that it had conducted a 

reasonable search of emails of custodians likely to have discoverable evidence, including 

available emails from the individuals described in Interrogatory Number 1, however the 

Tribe is not aware of the total number of emails sent or received by the relevant email 

accounts. (Id. at 3.) The Tribe’s response directed Plaintiff to its previous document 

productions for “the number of relevant, available emails.” (Id.) 

In the motion now before the Court, Plaintiff argues that “a complete response to 

this interrogatory should be compelled to prove that neither Quechan’s response to the 

spoliation issue nor its document production are complete, thus enabling W&C to seek 

appropriate discovery sanctions against the Tribe.” (Id. at 4.) Plaintiff argues that it 

should be able to ascertain the total number of emails sent or received by the relevant 

accounts to gauge whether the Tribe’s email production was reasonable. (Id. at 5.) On 

the other hand, the Tribe maintains its objections that the information sought is 

“categorically irrelevant and disproportionately burdensome.” (Id. at 6.) In support of 

its argument that the information requested is overly burdensome, the Tribe submits 

the declaration of its “MIS Director of Information Technology,” which states that the 

Tribe does not keep records of the number of emails sent from and received by official 

Tribal email addresses on a daily basis.” (ECF No. 297-8 at 2.) Additionally, such 

information is impossible to obtain for email accounts that have been deactivated and 

would require a time consuming, manual process of isolating and counting emails for 

which the Tribe lacks administrative resources. (Id.) 

The party seeking to compel discovery bears the burden of establishing that its 

request satisfies the relevancy requirements of Rule 26(b)(1). Soto v. City of Concord, 

162 F.R.D. 603, 610 (N.D. Cal. 1995). Plaintiff has not met its burden to demonstrate 

that the requested discovery is relevant. Plaintiff contends it can use the raw number of 

emails associated with the Tribal Accounts to infer that the Tribe withheld emails from 

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its document production. (See, e.g., ECF No. 297 at 11 (“Quite obviously, gauging 

whether a six e-mail production was reasonable could occur if Quechan simply complied 

with these very interrogatories and disclosed the number of e-mails sent from and 

received into these email accounts.”) But the number of emails sent or received on any 

given day, without regard to the subject matter of those emails, will not inform Plaintiff 

or the Court whether the Tribe failed to disclose relevant, responsive documents or 

whether potentially relevant emails were lost or destroyed. Nor does the requested 

information have any bearing on any of the claims or defenses in this case. “Rule 26(b) 

has never been a license to engage in an unwieldy, burdensome, and speculative fishing 

expedition.” Murphy v. Deloitte & Touche Grp. Ins. Plan, 619 F.3d 1151, 1163 (10th 

Cir.2010); U.S. ex rel. Carter v. Bridgepoint Educ., Inc., 305 F.R.D. 225, 237 (S.D. Cal. 

2015). The requested information is not relevant, and the Court therefore DENIES

Plaintiff’s request to compel a further response to Interrogatory Number 2 on that basis

and will not address the Tribe’s objection based on burden. 

C. Interrogatory No. 3

For each Tribal Account, Plaintiff asks the Tribe to “indicate with a yes or no 

whether any emails sent from or received by the account during the date range 

specified in Interrogatory Number 2 have been deleted or otherwise spoiled, and if yes, 

detail the complete circumstances surrounding such deletion(s) or spoliation(s) by 

identifying, amongst any and all other material information, the dates of such 

deletion(s) and or spoliation(s), the number of emails affected on each such date, the 

subject matter(s) of each affected email, and the efforts taken by both [the Tribe] and 

[its counsel in this litigation] to recover said emails.” (ECF No. 297 at 7.) The Tribe 

objected to this interrogatory, asserting that it is vague and ambiguous, overbroad and 

seeking irrelevant information, creates an undue burden, contains discrete subpart and 

seeks information protected by attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine. (Id.

at 7-8.) Subject to these objections, the Tribe offered the following substantive 

response: 

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The Tribe has taken reasonable steps to preserve and collect documents, 

including email, from custodians reasonably likely to have discoverable 

evidence. This includes, but is not limited to, emails from individuals and 

email accounts listed above in the Tribe’s response to Interrogatory No. 1 

that the Tribe understands are most relevant to the facts underlying the 

claims, counterclaims, and defenses in this litigation, specifically—but not 

exclusively—including email accounts associated with former President 

Escalanti, Vice President Smith, former Councilmember (and current 

President) Joaquin, former Councilman White, and Mr. Charles Montague. 

The Tribe is unaware of any loss of documents or ESI from these email 

accounts, via routine document production or otherwise. 

The Tribe’s email exchange server stores data for active email addresses but 

does not archive emails once an email has been deactivated. Pursuant to the 

Tribe’s routine data management procedures, the personalized email 

addresses based on Tribal Councilmember’s names are deactivated when 

Councilmembers leave office. When this occurs, emails associated with 

those personalized email addresses are not preserved on the email exchange 

server. 

(Id. at 8.) The response goes on to specify that the email addresses of former 

Councilmembers Montague, Comet, and Uribe were deactivated when they left office in 

March 2017, after which their email was not preserved on the email exchange server. 

(Id. at 8-9.) Councilmembers’ tablets issued for Tribal Council business are restored to 

factory settings to be issued to incoming Councilmembers. (Id. at 9.) The Tribe explains 

that it also searched email accounts that are assigned to specific offices and job 

descriptions (specifically, quechanpresident@quechantribe.com,

vicepresident@quechantribe.com, tribalsecretary@quechantribe.com, and 

executivesecretary@quechantribe.com). (Id.) These emails are preserved on a host 

computer, and all email from these accounts was retained and searched for responsive 

documents. (Id.) 

In the instant motion, Plaintiff claims that the Tribe’s response is incomplete as it 

does not explain the status of the email accounts for “two others who served” prior to 

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the election of 2017,3 whether there was “any spoliation of emails from the Chairman 

and Vice Chairman accounts,”4 or what, if any, efforts were made to recover the lost 

emails. (Id. at 9-10.) Plaintiff asserts that a complete response is needed to permit 

Plaintiff to move for spoliation sanctions. (Id. at 10.) Based on privilege log entries 

listing 12 emails between the Tribe and a non-party attorney on a single day, Plaintiff 

argues, somewhat inexplicably: “[t]hat translates to more than 1,000 e-mails over the 

course of a nine month period.” (Id. at 11.) The Court understands this to mean that 

Plaintiff infers from the twelve emails with another attorney that there should be more 

responsive emails than the Tribe has provided to Plaintiff. 

The Tribe argues that it has provided “a particularized answer to the relevant 

aspects of the interrogatory” that is sufficient, based on its collection of ESI from 

custodians and other sources it “believed to be the most reasonable sources of relevant 

information, based on the numerous iterations of W&C’s complaint and the Tribe’s 

defenses and counterclaims, which is what is required under the Rules.” (Id. at 15, 12 

(citations omitted).) According to the Tribe,5 because Plaintiff refused to enter into an 

ESI stipulation at the outset of the case, and failed to discuss custodians for document 

production, providing the information the Tribe deemed relevant was all that the Tribe 

was required to do. (Id. at 12.) Further, the Tribe asserts that Plaintiff makes no 

showing of relevance or proportionality to support compelling a further response to 

Interrogatory Number 3. (Id.) The Tribe argues that because “the majority of the 

 

3 The Court is not certain precisely which email accounts Plaintiff is referring to. It seems Plaintiff could 

be referring to Virgil Smith and Aaron Brown, or alternatively to Michael Jackson and Michael Jack

from the table of council people provided by Plaintiff in its motion, (see, e.g., ECF No. 297 at 4), 

Plaintiff’s argument, and the Tribe’s responses as previously described. 

4 Again, the Court is uncertain what accounts Plaintiff is referring to, as chairman and vice chairman 

accounts are not listed in the Tribal Accounts as summarized in Plaintiff’s table, (see, e.g., ECF No. 297

at 4), or in the Tribal Accounts as provided in the Tribe’s Amended Objections and Responses to 

Williams & Cochrane, LLP’s Second Set of Interrogatories, (ECF No. 297-5 at 8-10). 

5 The Court notes that the Tribe does not provide any citation or evidentiary support for its claim that 

Plaintiff refused to enter an ESI stipulation or discuss ESI search.

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former Councilmembers about which W&C complains in this motion are not named at 

all in W&C’s operative complaint . . . there is no basis to demand a further response 

regarding the individual email accounts of numerous additional individuals not 

reasonably or proportionally required to be custodians in the first place.” (Id.) 

Furthermore, according to the declaration of the Tribe’s Vice President (and 

Councilmember since 2015), on the infrequent occasion that the Tribal Council 

communicated internally via email, “the entire Tribal Council would likely be included, 

and the Tribal Council Secretary and Executive Secretary would often be copied.” (Id. at 

14; see also ECF No. 297-9 at 2-3.) This suggests that any emails that might have been in 

deactivated Tribal Accounts would likely have also existed in searched accounts. 

Though the parties drift into arguments regarding whether the Tribe spoiled any 

evidence in this case, this interrogatory does not require the Court to address that issue, 

or the appropriateness of the Tribe’s document production in any way. Instead, the 

Court must decide whether the Tribe should be compelled to respond to Interrogatory 

Number 3, which asks whether the Tribal Accounts (which Plaintiff has defined as those 

belonging to Councilmembers during the time Plaintiff represented the Tribe) are 

maintained and accessible to the Tribe, when deactivated accounts became unavailable,

and for some information about the unavailable emails if such information exists. The 

Court finds that this inquiry is within the bounds of Rule 26(b)(1). See Fed. R. Civ. P. 

26(b)(1) advisory committee’s note to 2015 amendment (“A portion of present Rule 

26(b)(1) is omitted from the proposed revision. After allowing discovery of any matter 

relevant to any party's claim or defense, the present rule adds: ‘including the existence, 

description, nature, custody, condition, and location of any documents or other tangible 

things and the identity and location of persons who know of any discoverable matter.’ 

Discovery of such matters is so deeply entrenched in practice that it is no longer 

necessary to clutter the long text of Rule 26 with these examples. The discovery 

identified in these examples should still be permitted under the revised rule when 

relevant and proportional to the needs of the case.”) This inquiry is sufficiently focused 

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and proportional to the case and will help Plaintiff assess whether the Tribe’s 

deactivation of Tribal Accounts might indicate spoliation.6 It is also relevant and 

proportional for the Tribe to describe what steps, if any, the Tribe and its counsel have 

taken to recover the deactivated or otherwise unavailable email accounts.

The Tribe’s incomplete responses, addressing only some of the Tribal Accounts, is 

inadequate and lacks clarity. 

Therefore, Plaintiff’s motion to compel further response to Interrogatory Number 

3 is GRANTED. The Tribe is ORDERED to provide a supplemental response to this 

Interrogatory, explaining specifically which of the accounts identified in response to 

Interrogatory Number 1 have been deactivated or are no longer available to the Tribe, 

providing the date and circumstances of such deactivation, describing the number and 

subjects of the unavailable emails (if accessible), and identifying any steps that the Tribe 

or its counsel has taken to recover the unavailable emails. 

D. Interrogatory No. 4 

In Interrogatory Number 4, Plaintiff asks the Tribe to indicate whether its counsel 

reviewed each Tribal Account for “e-mails relevant to the lawsuit, and if yes, [to] detail 

the process by which [counsel] reviewed each account and determined whether specific 

e-mails therein are relevant to any of the claims and defenses” set forth in the operative 

pleadings in this case. (ECF No. 297 at 15.) The tribe objected to this interrogatory as 

 

6 The Court notes that Plaintiff’s initial interrogatory was perhaps imprecisely worded insofar as it 

called for information about emails from the Tribal Accounts that had been “deleted or otherwise 

spoiled.” “Deleted” may include every individual deletion of an email by any Councilmember, and 

would be vastly over inclusive. “Spoiled” suggests knowledge and/or culpability that may not be 

present in the circumstances described in the Tribe’s response. However, the Tribe has settled on a 

reasonable interpretation in its response by identifying the accounts that are no longer accessible and 

why. Plaintiff’s assumption that lost email accounts contained relevant, responsive documents, and its 

use of accusing and conclusory language to address its concern appears to have impaired its ability to 

obtain useful information through the meet and confer process. (See ECF No. 297-1 at 2 (assuming 

that routinely deactivated emails were “spoliation issues,” and noting that when Plaintiff asked counsel 

for the Tribe if responsive documents had been lost or destroyed, Mr. Vittor asked Plaintiff to ask in a 

different way—perhaps one that asked whether potential sources of records had been lost without 

assuming the lost records were responsive documents).) 

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vague and ambiguous, containing multiple discrete subparts, and to the extent that it 

called for information protected by attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine. 

(Id.) Nevertheless, the Tribe answered in relevant part that it “conducted a reasonable 

search, collection, review and production of emails that are relevant to this litigation 

using keyword search terms, including available emails from individuals listed above in 

Interrogatory No. 1.” (Id. at 16.) 

In the instant motion, Plaintiff asserts that the Tribe’s response is inadequate 

because it does not describe the key words used for the Tribe’s search. (Id. at 17.) 

Plaintiff argues that the Tribe should be compelled to submit a complete response so 

Plaintiff can assess the reasonableness of the Tribe’s document production. (Id.) The 

Tribe maintains that it offered to negotiate with Plaintiff regarding the potential 

exchange of the parties’ search terms, but Plaintiff did not respond. (Id. at 19.) Because 

there is no ESI agreement, The Tribe argues that it should not be compelled to provide 

search terms unless W&C discloses its search terms. 

When an ESI search is required for document production, the best practice is for 

the parties to cooperate to reach an agreement regarding custodians and search terms 

to inform the document production. See, e.g., Baranco v. Ford Motor Company, Case 

No. 17-cv-03580-EMC, 2018 WL 9869540, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 10, 2018); Doe v. Heritage 

Academy, Inc., No. CV-16-03001-PHX-SPL, 2017 WL 6001481, at *13 (D. Ariz. June 9, 

2017); Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., No. 12-CV-0630-LHK (PSG), 2013 WL 

1942163, at *3 (N.D. Cal. May 9, 2013). Of course, agreement will not always be 

possible, and a party may use discovery to learn about its opponent’s record search 

parameters, either before or after the search has been conducted. See Baranco, 2018 

WL 9869540, at *1. 

This Court’s determination of this dispute is largely dictated by the timing of 

Plaintiff’s interrogatories. It certainly would have been preferred for Plaintiff to seek 

this information in advance of the document production, or at least prior to Plaintiff’s 

deadline to file a joint motion asking to compel further documents during the meet and 

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confer. However, upon receiving the document production, discovery into the 

adequacy of the production would certainly have been permissible. Upon reviewing the

docket, the Court notes that it held at least four lengthy informal discovery conferences 

with counsel for Plaintiff and the Tribe. (See ECF Nos. 246 (December 9, 2019 

conference), 252 (January 6, 2020 conference), 259 (January 13, 2020 conference), 263 

(January 29, 2020 conference).) During these conferences, Plaintiff never raised the 

adequacy of the search terms the Tribe used to review emails. After the Court held a 

discovery conference with counsel for Plaintiff and the Tribe on December 9, 2019, it 

ordered the Tribe to complete its rolling document production by January 10, 2020. 

(ECF No. 246.) Considering this, it appears that the Court’s 30-day deadline for filing a 

discovery dispute motion with the Court has long passed. See Hon. Michael S. Berg Civ. 

Chambers R., §IV.D. Plaintiff has provided nothing to show otherwise. Nothing 

presently before the Court provides good cause to change this deadline. 

While the Court would have been inclined to consider further meet and confer 

regarding search terms or the disclosure of search terms when Plaintiff could still 

compel further production of documents, because the deadline to address the 

document production has passed, the requested information is no longer relevant. Cf. 

Doe v. Heritage Academy, Inc., No. CV-16-03001-PHX-SPL, 2017 WL 6001481, at *13 (D. 

Ariz. June 9, 2017) (in ruling on parties’ motion for discovery dispute resolution 

regarding adequacy of defendant’s production of documents, court refused to order 

production of search terms and custodian without reviewing the RFPs and a specific 

showing that efforts to preserve and collect were inadequate, but ordering the parties 

“to meet and confer in an effort to reach agreement on a mutually-acceptable search 

protocol”), Apple, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., No. 12-CV-0630-LHK (PSG), 2013 

WL 1942163, at *3 (N.D. Cal. May 9, 2013) (finding that witness subject to third-party 

document subpoena had the same obligation as a party to participate in “transparent 

and collaborative discovery,” and ordering the third-party to produce search terms and 

custodians and then meet and confer regarding any further disputes about the 

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document production). Therefore, Plaintiff’s motion to compel further response to 

Interrogatory Number 4 is DENIED. 

E. Interrogatory No. 5 

Plaintiff’s final interrogatory asked the Tribe to “[i]dentify every e-mail from the email accounts identified in Interrogatory Number 1 that is relevant to this lawsuit in 

accordance with the response to Interrogatory 4 and otherwise, but that Quechan did 

not produce to Williams & Cochrane during discovery by the ‘to,’ ‘from,’ and ‘cc’ e-mail 

accounts, the subject matter(s) of the e-mails, and an explanation as to why each 

specific e-mail is not responsive to any of the requests for production in William’s & 

Cochrane’s first or second sets of requests for production to Quechan.” (ECF No. 297 at 

19.) The Tribe objected to the interrogatory as being vague and ambiguous, contained 

multiple subparts, and to the extent it sought information protected by the attorneyclient privilege or work product. (Id.) Despite its objections, the Tribe responded with a 

broad description of its records search process, similar to its response to Interrogatory 

Number 4. (Id. at 20.) 

In the instant motion, Plaintiff argues that the Tribe’s response was insufficient 

insofar as it does not identify the keywords used to identify the emails to be searched 

within the Tribal Accounts. (Id.) The Tribe contends its response was adequate, the 

issue of search terms was the only issue Plaintiff raised in the meet and confer, and 

again reiterates that Plaintiff refused to meet and confer on that issue. (Id. at 23.) For 

the same reasons the Court denied Plaintiff’s motion to compel further responses to 

Interrogatory number 4, Plaintiff’s motion to compel further response to Interrogatory 

Number 5 is DENIED. 

III. CONCLUSION

For the reasons detailed above, Plaintiff’s requests to compel further responses to 

Interrogatory Numbers 2, 4, and 5 are DENIED. Plaintiff’s request to compel further 

response to Interrogatory Number 3 is GRANTED. The Tribe must provide a 

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supplemental response to Interrogatory Number 3 as stated in section III.C, supra, no 

later than June 1, 2020.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: May 26, 2020

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