UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA 

Case No. 20-22872-Civ-COOKE/GOODMAN 

CHRISTOPHER HANSEN, 

Plaintiff, 

vs. 

LAS VINAS INVESTMENTS, LLC., and 

LAS VINAS BBQ, INC. 

Defendants.

____________________________________/

MAGISTRATE JUDGE GOODMAN’S DISCOVERY PROCEDURES ORDER 

 The following discovery procedures apply to all civil cases in which discovery is 

referred to United States Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman and where Judge Goodman 

is presiding over a case with full consent. 

OVERALL STATEMENT 

The Court designed these procedures to help the Parties and the Court work together 

to timely resolve discovery disputes without undue delay and unnecessary expense. The 

procedures are designed to (1) promote the timely internal resolution of discovery disputes by 

the parties themselves so that they have no need to seek judicial intervention, (2) help the 

parties obtain timely rulings to the extent they cannot on their own resolve their discovery 

disputes, (3) streamline the process of resolving discovery disputes by eliminating unnecessary 

motion practice, and (4) assist the Court by prohibiting the submission of motions and 

memoranda which are unnecessary, overly long or both. 

MEET AND CONFER 

Counsel must actually confer (in person or via telephone) and engage in reasonable 

compromise in a genuine effort to resolve their discovery disputes before filing a notice of a 

discovery hearing. In other words, there must be an actual conversation before a discovery 

hearing notice is filed. If counsel refuses to participate in a conversation, then the party 

seeking to a discovery hearing will so state in the required certificate of conference and outline 

the efforts made to have a conversation. 

The Court may impose sanctions, monetary or otherwise, if it determines discovery is 

being improperly sought, is being withheld in bad faith or if a party fails to confer in good 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 1 of 6
faith. Sending an email or telefax to opposing counsel with a demand that a discovery 

response or position be provided on the same day will rarely, if ever, be deemed a good faith 

effort to confer before filing a discovery hearing notice. 

DISCOVERY CALENDAR AND NO DISCOVERY MOTIONS 

 

 No written discovery motions, including motions to compel, for protective order, or 

related motions for sanctions will be filed unless specifically authorized by the Court.1

Similarly, the parties may not submit legal memoranda concerning a discovery hearing unless 

the Undersigned specifically authorizes it. This procedure is intended to minimize the need 

for discovery motions. The Court will strike any unauthorized discovery motions and 

memoranda. 

If, after conferring, the parties are unable to resolve their discovery disputes without 

Court intervention, then the Court holds a regular discovery calendar every Friday afternoon. 

The party seeking the discovery hearing will contact Chambers at (305) 523-5720 to place the 

matter on the next available discovery calendar. That party will be provided with available 

dates and will then confer with opposing counsel and confirm his or her availability for the 

discovery calendar. Once opposing counsel has confirmed availability, the party seeking the 

hearing will contact Chambers again to finalize the hearing date. [NOTE: The longer a party 

waits to contact Chambers to follow through after being provided with available times, the 

more likely it is that the hearing date will no longer be available. Therefore, the Court 

encourages parties seeking discovery hearings to follow through on a timely basis and confirm 

the hearing date.].

On the same day that Chambers confirms that the matter is being placed on the 

discovery calendar, the party seeking the discovery hearing will provide notice to all relevant 

parties by filing a Notice of Hearing and serving a copy on opposing counsel through the 

Court’s electronic docketing system. The Notice of Hearing must briefly and succinctly

identify the substance of the discovery matter to be heard. (For example, “The Parties dispute 

the appropriate time frame for Plaintiff’s Interrogatory Nos. 1, 4-7, and 10” or “The Parties 

disagree about whether Defendant produced an adequate 30(b)(6) witness on the topics listed 

in the notice.”) Ordinarily, no more than twenty (20) minutes per side will be permitted. The 

party scheduling the hearing must include in this Notice of Hearing a certificate of good 

faith that complies with Southern District of Florida Local Rule 7.1(a)(3). The Court will 

strike hearing notices which do not include a sufficient local rule certificate. 

The party who scheduled the discovery hearing must provide the Court a copy of all 

source materials relevant to the discovery dispute, via hand-delivery or through a document 

 

1

 Nevertheless, if the parties wish to submit an agreed-upon discovery order, such as a 

standard confidentiality-type of protective order, then they must (1) file a Notice of Proposed 

Stipulated Order with the proposed order attached to the notice and (2) submit a Wordversion courtesy copy to the Undersigned’s CM/ECF mailbox 

(goodman@flsd.uscourts.gov). This Order does not prohibit that submission because there is 

not a discovery dispute; instead, there is an agreement about a discovery issue. 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 2 of 6
that is emailed to the CM/ECF mailbox (goodman@flsd.uscourts.gov) on the date that the 

Notice of Hearing is filed. (For example, if the dispute concerns interrogatories, then the 

interrogatories at issue and the responses thereto, must be provided.) Source material is the 

actual discovery at issue. Source material is not memoranda or letters to the Court which are, 

for all intents and purposes, a mini-brief. The opposing party may submit additional source 

material to the CM/ECF mailbox, as well. 

Neither the Notice of Hearing nor the source materials should be used as a de facto 

strategy to submit a memorandum. For example, sending multi-page, rhetoric-filled letters to 

the Court or filing argument-riddled notices are specifically prohibited. The Court will strike 

letters, notices, and exhibits which are designed to circumvent the no motion/no memoranda 

policy. 

 

If one or more of the parties believe in good faith that the discovery dispute is not a 

routine, garden-variety dispute and needs specialized attention, then the parties may include 

a to-the-point, no-more-than-one-paragraph explanation in the Notice of Hearing, to flag the 

specific issues. In addition, the parties may submit a “notice of authorities,” which will list 

only the authorities, but which will not contain argument or be a disguised memorandum. At 

most, the list of authorities may contain a one-sentence, objective summary of the relevant 

holding of each case or authority. The Court will strike any non-compliant notice of 

authorities. 

For those discovery disputes which are particularly complex (and there are not many 

of those) and which a party believes will require briefing, a motion for leave to file a discovery 

motion or memoranda may be filed. The motion should briefly explain the extraordinary 

need, but the actual discovery motion or memorandum should not be attached or filed unless 

the Court grants the motion seeking leave. The Court anticipates that the need for motions 

and/or memoranda will arise only rarely. 

 The following topics are illustrations of discovery disputes which are usually not rare 

enough to bypass the standard no-motion policy and therefore would not ordinarily justify a 

motion for leave to file a discovery motion in a specific case absent extraordinary 

circumstances: (1) whether a party may take more than 10 depositions in the absence of 

consent; (2) whether a deposition may last more than 7 hours; (3) how a seven-hour 

deposition is allocated among the parties; (4) whether a 30(b)(6) witness was prepared to 

provide binding testimony on all the topics listed in the notice; (5) whether a noticed 

deposition is an “apex” deposition, and, if so, whether it will be permitted; (6) whether a party 

needs to arrange for a treating doctor to provide an expert witness report or if the party needs 

to make other written disclosures if the physician is expected to testify about the cause of an 

injury; (7) squabbles over the location of a deposition; (8) whether an attorney improperly 

instructed a deponent to not answer certain questions; (9) whether an attorney was improperly 

coaching a deponent; (10) whether a party or attorney may pay any money to a deponent or 

trial witness other than a standard witness fee, and, if so, under what circumstances and in 

what amounts; (11) whether a party may take “early” discovery; (12) whether a party 

exceeded the number of permissible interrogatories (and how should the sub-parts be 

counted); (13) whether an interrogatory answer is adequate or whether better answers are 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 3 of 6
required; and (14) whether a party engaged in a strategically unfair “document dump” which 

makes it difficult for a party to know which documents are responsive to a request. These are 

all routine discovery disputes which require the submission of only the Notice of Hearing, 

source material and, at most, an argument-free list of authorities. 

 The Court expects all parties to engage in reasonable compromise to facilitate the 

resolution of their discovery disputes. The Court may impose sanctions, monetary or 

otherwise, if the Court determines discovery is being improperly sought or is being withheld 

in bad faith. 

 

These procedures do not relieve parties from the requirements of any Federal Rules of 

Civil Procedure or Local Rules, except as noted above. 

PRE-HEARING DISCUSSIONS 

The mere fact that the Court has scheduled a discovery hearing/conference does 

not mean that the parties should no longer try to resolve the dispute. To the contrary, the 

parties are encouraged to continually pursue settlement of disputed discovery matters. If those 

efforts are successful, then counsel should contact Chambers as soon as practicable so that 

the hearing can be timely canceled. Alternatively, if the parties resolve some, but not all, of 

their issues before the hearing, then counsel must also timely contact Chambers and provide 

notice about those issues which are no longer in dispute (so that the Court and its staff do not 

unnecessarily work on matters no longer in dispute). 

EXPENSES, INCLUDING ATTORNEY’S FEES 

The Court reminds the parties and counsel that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 

37(a)(5) requires the Court to award expenses, including fees, unless an exception (such as 

the existence of a substantially justified, albeit losing, discovery position) applies to the 

discovery dispute and ruling. 

NO BOILERPLATE DISCOVERY OBJECTIONS 

“Vague, Overly Broad and Unduly Burdensome” 

Parties will not make conclusory boilerplate objections. Such objections do not comply 

with Local Rule 26.1(e)(2)(A), which provides that, “[w]here an objection is made to any 

interrogatory or sub-part thereof or to any production request under Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 34, the objection will state with specificity all grounds.” Blanket, unsupported 

objections that a discovery request is “vague, overly broad, or unduly burdensome” are, by 

themselves, meaningless, and the Court will disregard such objections. A party objecting on 

these bases must explain the specific and particular ways in which a request is vague, overly 

broad, or unduly burdensome. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(4) (the ground for objecting to an 

interrogatory “must be stated with specificity”); Josephs v. Harris Corp., 677 F.2d 985, 992 (3d 

Cir. 1982) (“the mere statement by a party that the interrogatory was ‘overly broad, 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 4 of 6
burdensome, oppressive and irrelevant’ is not adequate to voice a successful objection to an 

interrogatory.”). Testimony or evidence may be necessary to show that a particular request is 

in fact burdensome. 

“Irrelevant or Not Reasonably Calculated to Lead to Admissible Evidence” 

An objection that a discovery request is irrelevant or “not reasonably calculated to lead 

to admissible evidence” is an outdated type of objection, as that language no longer defines 

the scope of discovery under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1). The current version 

defines the scope of discovery as being “nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s 

claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case” -- and then lists several factors to 

analyze. The Court reminds the parties that the Federal Rules provide that information within 

this scope of discovery “need not be admissible in evidence” to be discoverable. See Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 26(b)(1); S. D. Fla. L. R. 26.1(g)(3)(A); Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 

340, 351-52 (1978). 

No Formulaic Objections 

Parties should avoid reciting a formulaic objection followed by an answer to the 

request. It has become common practice for a party to object on the basis of any of the above 

reasons, and then state that “notwithstanding the above,” the party will respond to the 

discovery request, subject to or without waiving such objection. Such a boilerplate objection 

and answer preserves nothing, and constitutes only a waste of effort and the resources of both 

the parties and the Court. Further, such practice leaves the requesting party uncertain as to 

whether the responding party fully answered. Moreover, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 

now specifically prohibit that practice (which was deemed inappropriate by many judges and 

commentators). For example, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2)(C) now provides that 

an objection to a request for documents “must state whether any responsive materials are 

being withheld on the basis of that objection.” In addition, it also says that “an objection to 

part of a request must specify the part and permit inspection of the rest.” Therefore, counsel 

should specifically state whether the responding party is fully answering or responding to a 

request and, if not, specifically identify the categories of information that have been withheld 

on an objection-by-objection basis. 

Objections Based upon Privilege 

 Generalized objections asserting attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine 

also do not comply with the Local Rules. S. D. Fla. L. R. 26.1(e)(2)(B) requires that objections 

based upon privilege identify the specific nature of the privilege being asserted, as well as 

identify details such as the nature and subject matter of the communication at issue, the sender 

and receiver of the communication and their relationship to each other. Parties must review 

this Local Rule carefully, and refrain from objections in the form of: “Objection. This 

information is protected by attorney/client and/or work product privilege.” The Local Rule 

also requires the preparation of a privilege log except for “communications between a party 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 5 of 6
and its counsel after commencement of the action and work product material created after 

commencement of the action.” 

DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers, in Miami, Florida, this 14th day of July 2020. 

Copies Furnished to: 

The Honorable Marcia G. Cooke 

All counsel of record 

Case 1:20-cv-22872-MGC Document 4 Entered on FLSD Docket 07/14/2020 Page 6 of 6