Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_18-cv-02332/USCOURTS-azd-2_18-cv-02332-8/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 840
Nature of Suit: Trademark
Cause of Action: 15:1114 Trademark Infringement

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WO

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

BBK Tobacco & Foods LLP,

Plaintiff,

v. 

Skunk Incorporated, et al.,

Defendants.

No. CV-18-02332-PHX-JAT

ORDER 

Pending before the Court is Defendants Skunk Incorporated and Vatra 

Incorporated’s (“Defendants”) Motion to Quash Third-Party Subpoenas. (Doc. 213). 

Plaintiff BBK Tobacco & Foods LLP (“Plaintiff”) has responded, (Doc. 217), and 

Defendants have replied, (Doc. 221). The Court now rules on the motion.1

I. BACKGROUND

In this, the latest chapter in the ongoing litany of discovery disputes in this case, the 

parties are feuding over the propriety of a third-party subpoena. Plaintiff served the 

subpoena on Special Domain Services, LLC (“SDS”) a subsidiary of GoDaddy.com, LLC 

(“GoDaddy”)—an internet domain registrar and website hosting company. (See Doc. 213 

at 2).2 The subpoena requested the following information:

 

1 After the close of briefing, Plaintiff’s counsel e-mailed chambers to make supplemental 

arguments. The court did not consider inappropriate supplemental arguments e-mailed to 

chambers, and this kind of gross misuse of the chambers e-mail may result in future 

sanctions.

2 Plaintiff served an identical subpoena on GoDaddy because Defendants are apparently 

uncertain about which entity actually hosts their websites. (Doc. 213 at 2). Plaintiff has 

since withdrawn that subpoena but the parties agree that it would seek identical information 

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A. Any document or other business record regarding the following brand 

names, entities, and domain names:

Skunk 

Skunkguard 

Skunk Guard 

Skunk, Inc. 

Skunkguard.com 

Skunkbags.com 

B. Any document or other business record from January 1, 2014 until 

present regarding Vatra, Inc. and containing the word “skunk” alone or 

in combination with any other words, including but not limited to 

“skunkguard” or “skunk guard” and “skunkbags” or “skunk bags”.

C. Any document or other business record regarding Alise Jusic aka “Alis 

Jusic” which pertains to, is associated with, contains reference to, or is 

otherwise related to Skunk, Skunk Guard, and/or any other iteration of 

the term “Skunk.” 

D. Any document or other business record regarding alisej7@gmail.com

which pertains to, is associated with, contains reference to, or is otherwise 

related to Skunk, Skunk Guard, and/or any other iteration of the term 

“Skunk.”

E. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the Wordpress 

database from 2014 and 2015 or earliest available date for 

“skunkguarddb,” shown on the attached document numbered 

SKUNK002265 (attached).

F. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the Wordpress 

database from 2014 and 2015 or earliest available date for the vatra.com 

website, database name unavailable but can be found by looking at 

relevant site wp-config file. 

 

as the subpoena issued to SDS. Because any subpoena to GoDaddy is still hypothetical at 

this point, the Court cannot quash or modify it. However, because the subpoena (if filed) 

will seek identical information, the Court would expect that Plaintiff would make every 

effort to ensure that it does not conflict with this order.

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G. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the Wordpress

database from 2014 and 2015 or earliest available date for the 

skunkbags.com website, database name unavailable can be found by 

looking at relevant site wp-config file.

(Id. at 14–15). Plaintiff later revised Categories E, F, and G of the subpoena in the following 

manner:

E. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest 

Wordpress[] database(s) for the http://www.skunkguard.com domain and 

all hosted files for http://www.skunkguard.com. Including all current live 

hosted files and databases as well as any relevant backups.

F. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest 

Wordpress database(s) for the http://www.vatra.com domain and all 

hosted files for http://www.vatra.com. Including all current live hosted 

files and databases as well as any relevant backups.

G. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest 

Wordpress database(s) for the http://www.skunkbags.com domain and all 

hosted files for http://www.skunkbags.com. Including all current live 

hosted files and databases as well as any relevant backups. 

(Id. at 34–35).

After confirming its jurisdiction to hear the dispute over this subpoena, the Court 

entered an order permitting Defendants to file a motion to quash. (Doc. 206). Notably, the 

Court emphasized that “[t]he motion must, with exacting specificity, state the relief 

sought.” (Id. at 1). The order further required Defendants to “be specific as to which 

categories of documents are entitled to protection.” (Id. at 1–2 n.1). The pending motion 

followed.

II. LEGAL STANDARD

In ruling on the motion to quash, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (“Rule”) 26 and 

Rule 45 guide the Court’s discretion. R. Prasad Indus. v. Flat Irons Envtl. Sols. Corp., No. 

CV-12-08261-PCT-JAT, 2014 WL 2804276, at *2 (D. Ariz. June 20, 2014). Rule 26 

usually allows parties to obtain discovery on any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to a 

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claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. In the third-party subpoena 

context, however, courts have often demanded a stronger-than-usual showing of relevance, 

requiring the requesting party to “demonstrate that its need for discovery outweighs the 

nonparty’s interest in nondisclosure.” R. Prasad Indus., 2014 WL 2804276, at *2 (citing 

Slater Steel, Inc. v. Vac-Air Alloy Corp., 107 F.R.D. 246, 248 (W.D.N.Y. 1985)). When 

considering Rule 26, the Court must also bear in mind the purpose of discovery, which is 

to “make a trial less a game of blind man’s buff and more a fair contest with the basic issues 

and facts disclosed to the fullest practicable extent.” United States v. Procter & Gamble 

Co., 356 U.S. 677, 682 (1958) (citing Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 501 (1947)).

Rule 45(D)(3)(A) delineates when a court must modify or quash a subpoena. When 

a subpoena requires disclosure of privileged or other protected matter, or would subject the 

person to an undue burden, Rule 45 commands that it be quashed or modified. See Mount 

Hope Church v. Bash Back!, 705 F.3d 418, 427–28 (9th Cir. 2012) (explaining that undue 

burdens are those associated with complying with the subpoena). Among the factors that 

can cause the burden of compliance to become undue are “relevance, the need of the party 

for the documents, the breadth of the document request, the time period covered by it, [and] 

the particularity with which the documents are described.” Moon v. SCP Pool Corp., 232 

F.R.D. 633, 637 (C.D. Cal. 2005) (quoting United States v. IBM, 83 F.R.D. 97, 104 

(S.D.N.Y. 1979)). The party seeking quashal bears the burden of persuasion. Id.

III. DISCUSSION

Defendants assert that each and every category of information requested in the 

subpoena is inappropriate. They assert that the requests in Categories A though D are 

overbroad in that they would require SDS to produce e-mails that are possibly privileged, 

confidential, irrelevant or span too much time. (Doc. 213 at 5–6). Indeed, Defendants’ 

motion makes clear that their exclusive concern with Categories A through D’s requests

relates to the possibility of SDS producing e-mail communications that—whether between 

Defendants’ employees or between Defendants and their attorneys—may be hosted by 

SDS.

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Given the parties met and conferred (albeit, via letter), Plaintiff offers something of 

a remarkable response: It has “no interest in” obtaining any e-mails that SDS might store.

3

(Doc. 217 at 4). Although Category D certainly covers some e-mails, Plaintiff is interested 

only in communications between Mr. Jusic and SDS conducting business at arm’s length, 

which would not be hosted by SDS at all. (Id. at 6). In fact, “[n]ow that Defendants [have] 

informed Plaintiff about e[-]mail addresses hosted by SDS,” Plaintiff tells the Court it will 

“exclude (and would have previously excluded) the same from the scope of the subpoena.” 

(Id. at 1).4 Plaintiff further provides that it will revise the subpoena to exclude the objectedto items from its scope. (Id. at 2). Plaintiff nevertheless has not withdrawn the subpoena 

and argues that this Court should deny the motion to quash despite seeming to concede that 

the subpoena is overly broad in relation to what Plaintiff actually seeks. (Id.).

In reply, Defendants indicate that they would largely have no quarrel with

Categories A though D if they were so limited. (Doc. 221 at 2). Defendants even state that 

Plaintiff’s reply shows it is “perfectly capable of limiting the subpoena [C]ategories.” (Id. 

at 3). Yet they press on and argue the Court should quash Categories A through D “in their 

entirety” on the basis that the language of the subpoenas is not so limited. (Id.).

The Court partially agrees with Defendants’ reasoning. There is apparently 

complete agreement at this point that Plaintiff does not want—and SDS should not be made 

to produce—the objected-to e-mails. But the subpoena has neither been withdrawn nor 

revised. No matter how strenuously Plaintiff insists that it seeks only “invoices, job specs, 

work orders, receipts, sales history, etc.,” the words in the subpoena speak for themselves 

 

3 The Court describes this response as remarkable because it is difficult to imagine how 

such a critical fact could not arise during a meet and confer process conducted in good 

faith. The Court finds that the clear failure to make an honest effort to understand the other 

side’s position particularly egregious here because the Court has already admonished the 

parties for failing to comply with meet and confer requirements. (Doc. 121 at 1 n.1). Going 

forward, these requirements must be taken seriously.

4 To a certain extent, this representation is not entirely accurate because Defendants raised 

the same points during the meet and confer process. (Docs. 217-5, 217-6). It is not 

belaboring the point to say that this emphatically demonstrates the importance of 

conducting the meet and confer process in good faith. Simply put, there was no need to 

waste the Court’s time and client resources over this e-mail issue. Had the parties taken the 

time to understand each other’s positions, this issue could and should have been avoided. 

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and they tell a different story. (See Doc. 217 at 5). Categories A through D each request 

“[a]ny document or other business record” containing the information that Plaintiff seeks. 

So formulated, that language is obviously broad enough to cover the kinds of e-mails that 

Defendants state SDS hosts on their behalf. SDS cannot be expected to divine that these 

words do not really mean what they say and that, instead of “any document,” the subpoena 

actually requests a more limited class of documents. In other words, the Court deems what 

Plaintiff has told the Court about the information that it actually seeks to be tantamount to 

an admission that the subpoena as written is overly broad in relation to Plaintiff’s need for 

the documents, flunks particularity, and would have SDS produce items of questionable 

relevance—all factors that would weigh heavily in favor of quashal or modification. See, 

e.g., Lewin v. Nackard Bottling Co., No. CV 10-8041-PCT-FJM, 2010 WL 4607402, at *1 

(D. Ariz. Nov. 4, 2010) (granting Rule 45 motion where requesting party requested all 

documents and did not limit request to certain kinds of documents); Diamond State Ins. 

Co. v. Rebel Oil Co., Inc., 157 F.R.D. 691, 695 (D. Nev. 1994) (modifying a subpoena 

because the term “all agreements” could be vague and ambiguous and that compliance 

thereto may be burdensome).

Having made this finding, however, the Court will modify the subpoena instead of 

quashing it and allowing Plaintiff to go back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, in light 

of the history of this litigation and in view of the looming discovery deadline, the Court is 

constrained to conclude that modification is the best course because the parties are in 

agreement (at least for now) on this point. There is simply no good reason to take any action 

but modify the subpoena’s language to conform to that agreement. Therefore, Categories 

A through D are each modified in the following way: The phrase “Any document or other 

business record” will be enlarged to say “Any document, excluding e-mails hosted by SDS, 

or other business record such as invoices, job specs, work orders, receipts, sales history, 

etc.”

5

The Court now turns to address Defendants’ other objections to Categories A 

 

5 Given the Court’s modification of the subpoena, it need not address Defendants’ 

alternative argument under the Stored Communications Act.

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through D. Defendants also argue that Categories A, C, and D, are improper because the 

requests lack temporal bounds. (Doc. 213 at 5–7). They seemingly do not, however, quarrel 

with Category B, which seeks only documents from January 1, 2014, on. (Id. at 6). Plaintiff 

contends that it is “unable to limit” Categories A, C, and D “because the very essence of 

the dispute is over priority.” (Doc. 217 at 7). 

The reason for which Plaintiff served the subpoena belies its contention that its 

requests cannot be limited in their temporal scope. Specifically, “Plaintiff issued the 

Subpoenas to seek only evidence that corroborated or contradicted Defendants’ claim of 

2014 and 2015 online sales of its product using the disputed ‘Skunk’ mark.” (Id. at 2). 

Why, then, would Plaintiff require documents from both well-before and well-after 2014? 

Plaintiff offers no compelling answer to that question and its ability to temporally limit 

Category B only goes to show that it is more than capable of doing so in the other 

Categories. Moreover, similar requests to produce documents spanning many years are 

routinely found to create an undue burden. See, e.g., Roe v. City of San Diego, No. CV 12-

0243-W(WVG), 2013 WL 12415915, at *5 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 27, 2013); Groce v. Claudat,

No. 09CV01630-BTM (WMc), 2012 WL 1831574, at *3 (S.D. Cal. May 18, 2012); Moon, 

232 F.R.D. at 637. Thus, the Court will modify the timeframe for Categories A, C, and D. 

In an abundance of caution, the Court believes it should not sweep too broadly when 

excluding time from these Categories. Accordingly, the Court limits these Categories to 

January 1, 2013, until present. This timeframe is well-suited to obtain the information that 

Plaintiff seeks; namely, information related to whether Defendants began selling products 

using the mark online in 2014.

Defendants also posit that Categories A, C, and D will result in SDS producing 

information that is privileged. (Doc. 213 at 6). The Court believes that its modification to 

Categories A through D resolves this issue too. In other words, to the extent that Defendants 

contend that the communications contained in Exhibit D to their motion are privileged and 

would be in SDS’s possession because it hosts them, the modification excludes those emails from the subpoena’s scope. The Court notes further that while Category D does 

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contemplate the production of some e-mails, those e-mails will include only what Plaintiff 

actually seeks—e-mail communications between Mr. Jusic and SDS conducting business 

at arm’s length. (Doc. 217 at 6). The privilege log identifies no such e-mails.

Defendants lastly argue that “Categories E through G should be narrowed so that 

they only seek hosted files that could be presented to percipient witnesses which include 

text files, images, audio files or Word documents existing from 2014[–]present for the 

websites: http://www.skunkguard.com, http://www.vatra.com, and 

http://www.skunkbags.com.” (Doc. 213 at 7). The gravamen of this argument is that the 

information Plaintiff requests can be understood only by an expert, and Plaintiff has 

disclosed no expert that is capable of doing so. (Id.). In response, Plaintiff points out that 

Defendants themselves produced at least one of these records without the aid of an expert 

to support their position that they launched their website in 2014. (Doc. 217 at 7).

The Court has reviewed the database export that Defendants previously produced. 

(Doc. 217-3 at 2). The spreadsheet does, admittedly, have many cells that contain a variety 

of esoteric technical terms. To support the proposition that their website launched in 2014, 

however, Defendants highlighted one cell that should be relatively easy for most to 

understand. Namely, a cell marked “Creation” with a date of October 25, 2014. (Id.). Given 

the purpose for which Plaintiff requests the database exports, the Court can only conclude 

that it would rely on the same information. The Court is completely confident that reading 

a date is a skill with which the average juror is perfectly proficient. It does not “result[] 

from a process of reasoning which can be mastered only by specialists in the field,” Joshua 

David Mellberg LLC v. Will, 386 F. Supp. 3d 1098, 1101 (D. Ariz. 2019) (quoting Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 701, Committee Notes on Rules—2000 Amendment), it is not a subject beyond the 

jury’s ken, Strong v. Valdez Fine Foods, 724 F.3d 1042, 1046 (9th Cir. 2013) (explaining 

that expert testimony is not appropriate where the matter testified to is within the 

knowledge of the jury). Because expert testimony would not be permitted, let alone 

required, to read a date off of a piece of paper, the Court will not quash or modify the 

subpoena on this basis.

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IV. MODIFIED SUBPOENA

For the convenience of the parties, but most especially for non-party SDS, the Court 

will now redraft the subpoena including the Court’s modifications:

A. Any document, excluding e-mails hosted by SDS, or other business record 

such as invoices, job specs, work orders, receipts, sales history, etc., from 

January 1, 2013 until present regarding the following brand names, entities, 

and domain names: 

Skunk 

Skunkguard 

Skunk Guard 

Skunk, Inc. 

Skunkguard.com 

Skunkbags.com 

B. Any document, excluding e-mails hosted by SDS, or other business record 

such as invoices, job specs, work orders, receipts, sales history, etc., from 

January 1, 2014 until present regarding Vatra, Inc. and containing the word 

“skunk” alone or in combination with any other words, including but not 

limited to “skunkguard” or “skunk guard” and “skunkbags” or “skunk bags”.

C. Any document, excluding e-mails hosted by SDS, or other business record 

such as invoices, job specs, work orders, receipts, sales history, etc., from 

January 1, 2013 until present regarding Alise Jusic aka “Alis Jusic” which 

pertains to, is associated with, contains reference to, or is otherwise related 

to Skunk, Skunk Guard, and/or any other iteration of the term “Skunk.”

D. Any document, excluding e-mails hosted by SDS, or other business record 

such as invoices, job specs, work orders, receipts, sales history, etc., from 

January 1, 2013 until present regarding alisej7@gmail.com which pertains 

to, is associated with, contains reference to, or is otherwise related to Skunk, 

Skunk Guard, and/or any other iteration of the term “Skunk.”

E. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest Wordpress[] 

database(s) for the http://www.skunkguard.com domain and all hosted files 

for http://www.skunkguard.com. Including all current live hosted files and 

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databases as well as any relevant backups.

F. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest Wordpress 

database(s) for the http://www.vatra.com domain and all hosted files for 

http://www.vatra.com. Including all current live hosted files and databases 

as well as any relevant backups. 

G. A full MySQL database Export (in SQL Format) of the earliest Wordpress 

database(s) for the http://www.skunkbags.com domain and all hosted files 

for http://www.skunkbags.com. Including all current live hosted files and 

databases as well as any relevant backups.

V. CONCLUSION

Therefore,

IT IS ORDERED that Defendants Skunk Incorporated and Vatra Incorporated’s 

(“Defendants”) Motion to Quash Third-Party Subpoenas (Doc. 213) is GRANTED IN 

PART AND DENIED IN PART as explained in the above.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Plaintiff BBK Tobacco & Foods, Inc. shall serve 

a copy of this order on SDS within 7 days of the date of this order.

IT IS FINALLY ORDERED that, because the motion was granted in part and 

denied in part, each party shall bear its own costs and expenses consistent with Rule 

37(a)(5)(C). See, e.g., Keenan v. Maricopa Cty. Special Health Care Dist., No. 2:18-CV1590-HRH, 2019 WL 5103082, at *4 (D. Ariz. Oct. 11, 2019); Sanchez Y Martin, S.A. de 

C.V. v. Dos Amigos, Inc., No. 17CV1943-LAB-LL, 2019 WL 3769191, at *4 (S.D. Cal. 

Aug. 9, 2019); Evergreen Int’l Airlines, Inc. v. Anchorage Advisors, LLC, No. 3:11-CV1416-PK, 2013 WL 12321591, at *10 (D. Or. Nov. 27, 2013).

Dated this 12th day of May, 2020.

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