Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_13-md-02420/USCOURTS-cand-4_13-md-02420-62/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 15:15 Antitrust Litigation

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

IN RE:

LITHIUM ION BATTERIES 

ANTITRUST LITIGATION

Case No. 13-md-02420-YGR (DMR)

ORDER ON JOINT DISCOVERY 

LETTER

Re: Dkt. No. 745

Plaintiffs and Defendants LG Chem Ltd. and LG Chem America, Inc. (collectively, “LG 

Chem”) filed a joint letter brief in which Plaintiffs move to compel LG Chem to supplement its 

response to an interrogatory. The court held a hearing on August 13, 2015. For the following 

reasons, as well as those stated at the hearing, Plaintiff’s motion to compel is granted.

I. Background

In July 2013, the United States Department of Justice charged LG Chem, Ltd. with 

violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, by engaging in a criminal conspiracy to fix 

the prices of cylindrical lithium ion battery cells sold in the United States and elsewhere for use in 

notebook computer battery packs. (United States v. LG Chem, Ltd., No. 13-cr-0473 YGR (N.D. 

Cal. July 18, 2013) Information.) LG Chem, Ltd. entered into a plea agreement in September 

2013. At the October 10, 2013 plea hearing, LG Chem, Ltd.’s representative, Heung Ryul Yoon, 

Vice President/Legal Department, testified that officers within LG Chem, Ltd.’s battery division 

participated in “about 20 or 30” discussions or meetings related to the charged conspiracy. 

In March 2015, the undersigned ordered LG Chem, Ltd. to amend its response to an 

interrogatory propounded by Plaintiffs asking for “all facts” which supported the guilty plea. With 

respect to Yoon’s testimony regarding the “20 or 30” discussions or meetings pertaining to the 

conspiracy, the court ordered LG Chem, Ltd. to “identify when and where they took place; which 

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individuals were present, including the companies they represented and their job titles; and the 

subjects discussed by the participants.” In re: Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litig., No. 13-MD02420 YGR (DMR), 2015 WL 1223972, at *3 (N.D. Cal. March 17, 2015).

The dispute in the instant joint letter pertains to LG Chem’s response to Plaintiffs’ 

Interrogatory No. 2, Set 2. It asks for information about LG Chem’s meetings and 

communications with other lithium ion battery producers that occurred during the alleged class 

period, as follows:

Identify meetings or communications during the Relevant Time 

Period between (i) You and other producer(s) or seller(s) of Lithium 

Ion Battery cells and/or Lithium Ion Batteries, including the named 

Defendants in this coordinated proceeding (but not including Your 

corporate subsidiaries) regarding Lithium Ion Battery Cells and/or 

Lithium Ion Batteries pricing, price increase announcements, terms 

or conditions of sales, profit margins or market share, 

production/output levels, inventory, customers, or sales. “Identify” 

means to provide the date of the meeting or communication, name 

the person(s) who attended and/or participated in the meeting or 

communication, and describe the subject matter discussed and any 

information You provided or received.

(Joint Letter Ex. A part 1.)

In response, LG Chem provided a chart identifying 63 separate meetings or 

communications, and listing the date, name and affiliation of attendees, as well as the type of 

contact (e.g., meeting, email, telephone call) for each. In lieu of listing the “subject matter 

discussed and any information . . . provided or received,” and in reliance on Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 33(d), LG Chem directed Plaintiffs to over 1,700 pages

1

it had produced, “which reflect 

the subject matter discussed in the previously identified meetings and conversations.” (Joint 

Letter Ex. A part 2.) Plaintiffs challenge this response as evasive and incomplete because it does 

not include the subjects discussed and any information provided or received for each meeting or 

communication identified by LG Chem.

2

 

 

1 At the hearing, LG Chem clarified that the Bates range of documents identified in its response, 

LGC-MDL0000001-0001725, consists of 278 individual documents (which may be multiple 

pages) and their English translations, which altogether comprise the approximately 1700 pages. 

2

Plaintiffs represented that they had served the same interrogatory on the other defendants, all of 

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II. Legal Standard

When served with interrogatories, the responding party must serve its answers and any 

objections within 30 days. Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(2). “Each interrogatory must, to the extent it is 

not objected to, be answered separately and fully in writing under oath.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(3) 

(emphasis added). An answer to an interrogatory should be complete in itself:

[A]n answer to an interrogatory must be responsive to the question. 

It should be complete in itself and should not refer to the pleadings, 

or to depositions or other documents, or to other interrogatories, at 

least where such references make it impossible to determine whether 

an adequate answer has been given without an elaborate comparison 

of answers.

Scaife v. Boenne, 191 F.R.D. 590, 594 (N.D. Ind. 2000) (citations and quotation marks omitted). 

However, if an answer to an interrogatory may be determined by “examining, auditing, compiling, 

abstracting, or summarizing a party’s business records . . . , and if the burden of deriving or 

ascertaining the answer will be substantially the same for either party, the responding party may 

answer by . . . specifying the records that must be reviewed, in sufficient detail to enable the 

interrogating party to locate and identify them as readily as the responding party could . . . .” Fed. 

R. Civ. P. 33(d).

III. Discussion

LG Chem contends that its response to Interrogatory No. 2, Set 2 is sufficient. It argues

that it properly relied upon Rule 33(d) by identifying particular documents in lieu of providing a

written response to a portion of the interrogatory. LG Chem further asserts that Plaintiffs should 

obtain the requested material through deposition, which is a more appropriate discovery vehicle

for the information sought. Finally, LG Chem argues that it has already identified the subject 

matter of the meetings per the interrogatory’s own terms and is not obligated to respond further.

Pursuant to Rule 33(d), a party’s response to an interrogatory may refer to business records 

or abstracts only “if the burden of deriving or ascertaining the answer will be substantially the 

same for either party.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 33(d). “A requesting party claiming an inappropriate use 

 

whom responded in an adequate manner, and without resort to Rule 33(d).

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of Rule 33(d) must make a prima facie showing that the use of Rule 33(d) is somehow inadequate, 

whether because the information is not fully contained in the documents or because it is too 

difficult to extract.” RSI Corp. v. Int’l Bus. Machines Corp., No. 08–CV–3414 RMW, 2012 WL 

3095396, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 30, 2012) (internal citations omitted). The burden then shifts to the 

responding party to show that “(1) a review of the documents will actually reveal answers to the 

interrogatories; and (2) the burden of deriving the answer is substantially the same for the party 

serving the interrogatory as for the party served.” Id. (citation omitted). 

Here, Plaintiffs argue that they cannot derive complete answers to the interrogatory from 

the referenced documents for two reasons. First, they claim that the authors of internal emails 

recognized that they needed to be “circumspect about what they put in writing,” promising to 

share details in person that were not included in the emails. (Joint Letter 3.) For example, in one 

email chain, a writer stated that he or she would provide “more details” and “additional reports” in 

person, to which another writer mentioned “internal and external security regarding the email” in 

response. (Joint Letter 3 (citing LGC-MDL0000571-74).) Another person stated in an email that 

he or she would “share additional information on the phone.” (LGC-MDL0000305.) Therefore, 

the authors of the documents themselves acknowledge that the writings are incomplete. Second, 

the authors of the emails used code names and symbols to refer to competitors, effectively 

frustrating outsiders’ attempts to comprehend the communications. The court finds that Plaintiffs 

have made a prima facie showing that LG Chem’s use of Rule 33(d) is inadequate because the 

information is not fully contained in the documents and may be difficult to extract.

The burden thus shifts to LG Chem to demonstrate that a review of the documents will 

reveal answers to the interrogatory, and that the burden of deriving the answers is substantially the 

same for either party. LG Chem does not dispute Plaintiffs’ characterization of the documents as 

cryptic and alluding to unwritten details. Instead, it argues that to the extent the emails contain

codes, such codes do not pertain to the information sought by Plaintiffs’ interrogatory. Therefore, 

decoding is not necessary to understand the responsive information contained in the documents.

LG Chem also asserts that to the extent witness testimony is required to fill in the gaps, such as

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furnishing the details that the email authors promised to provide in person or over the phone, 

Plaintiffs can depose the necessary individuals. (Joint Letter 7.) As to the burden associated with 

obtaining answers from the documents, LG Chem states that the identified documents are the very 

same ones it would review in order to provide the supplemental responses sought by Plaintiffs in 

this dispute. Therefore, LG Chem argues, the burden on either party to ascertain the answers from 

the documents is equal. 

LG Chem’s arguments are unpersuasive. Its assertion that Plaintiffs can obtain the missing 

information through deposition is a concession that the documents themselves do not contain all of 

the responsive material. That alone is fatal to LG Chem’s Rule 33(d) argument, since reference to 

the identified documents is admittedly insufficient. It is LG Chem’s burden to show that the 

documents contain complete answers to the interrogatory. See In re Sulfuric Acid Antitrust Litig., 

231 F.R.D. 320, 325 (N.D. Ill. 2005) (“Invocation of [Rule 33(d)] requires first that the 

information actually be obtainable from the documents.”). While some pertinent information may 

be found in the documents, this is not enough: Plaintiffs are entitled to a complete response. See

id. at 326 (granting motion to compel further response to interrogatory that asked for information 

about communications with other producers, suppliers, or distributors; noting that “even if a 

partial answer could be obtained from [reviewing documents identified by defendant], the 

plaintiffs are entitled to complete disclosure”).

LG Chem argues that depositions are the more appropriate vehicle for obtaining the 

discovery now sought by Plaintiffs. According to LG Chem, Plaintiffs plan to depose at least 

three current or former LG Chem employees who participated in the communications, and 

Plaintiffs are free to ask these individuals for details about the contacts. LG Chem cites cases in 

which courts have held that written interrogatories are an inadequate substitution for depositions 

when the “goal is discovery of a witness’ recollection of conversations.” (Joint Letter 6 (citing, 

e.g., Shoen v. Shoen, 5 F.3d 1289, 1297 (9th Cir. 1992)).) However, such cases are 

distinguishable, in that the parties propounding the interrogatories in question sought detailed, 

narrative descriptions of communications, rather than the kind of summary information sought by 

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Plaintiffs here, as discussed below. Moreover, while depositions may be necessary to flesh out the

details of the communications, the interrogatory response may assist Plaintiffs in deciding how 

best to allocate their limited deposition opportunities. 

Finally, LG Chem argues that it has already identified the subject matter of the meetings 

per the interrogatory’s own terms. The interrogatory asks LG Chem to identify meetings or 

communications regarding specific subjects, e.g., pricing, price increase announcements, terms or 

conditions of sales, and production/output levels. LG Chem contends that by definition, it has 

“identified” the subject matter by including a particular meeting or communication as responsive 

to the interrogatory. This argument is not compelling. Without more, Plaintiffs are not able to 

discern which of the enumerated subjects were discussed at particular meetings. 

For these reasons, the court finds that LG Chem’s use of Rule 33(d) to respond to 

Plaintiffs’ interrogatory is inappropriate. LG Chem must supplement its response to identify the 

subject matter discussed and any information LG Chem provided or received in each meeting or 

communication. LG Chem need not prepare detailed narrative responses. At the hearing, 

Plaintiffs confirmed that their interrogatory seeks fairly generalized information. The court finds 

that LG Chem’s response to an earlier interrogatory provides a good example of the appropriate 

level of detail required here. (Aug. 13, 2015 Hr’g Tr. at 12: “Panasonic shared information about 

various topics, including production facilities, capacity, product development, quality 

improvements, its lack of Korean customers, and its concern about cobalt prices.”) 

IV. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiffs’ motion to compel is granted. At the conclusion of the 

hearing, the court ordered LG Chem to provide a supplemental response to Interrogatory No. 2, 

Set 2 by no later than August 27, 2015. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: August 21, 2015

________________________

DONNA M. RYU

United States Magistrate Judge

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORN

I

A

IT IS SO ORDERED

Judge Donna M. Ryu

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