UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

FORT LAUDERDALE DIVISION

Case No.: 0:22-cv-61648-AHS

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES INSURANCE CO., 

GEICO INDEMNITY CO., GEICO GENERAL 

INSURANCE COMPANY and GEICO CASUALTY CO.,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

TITAN WELLNESS CENTERS OF FORT MYERS, 

L.L.C., HOA H. NGUYEN, D.C., ISO-DIAGNOSTICS 

TESTING, INC, DAVID BARUCH, JOEL D. STEIN, D.O., 

P.A., and JOEL D. STEIN, D.O.,

 

Defendants.

_______________________________________________/

PLAINTIFFS’ MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION 

TO DEFENDANTS JOEL D. STEIN, D.O., P.A., AND JOEL D. STEIN, D.O’S 

MOTION TO COMPEL

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Plaintiffs Government Employees Insurance Co., GEICO Indemnity Co., and GEICO 

General Insurance Company (collectively “Plaintiffs” or “GEICO Plaintiffs”), respectfully submit 

this memorandum in opposition to Defendants Joel D. Stein, D.O., P.A. (“Stein P.A.”) and Joel D. 

Stein, D.O.’s (“Stein”)(collectively the “Stein Defendants”) motion to compel. See ECF No. 93.

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

Rather than serve appropriate, tailored document requests that – as required by F.R.C.P. 

34(b)(1)(A) – “describe with reasonable particularity each item or category of items” to be 

produced, the Stein Defendants copied and pasted the allegations from virtually every substantive 

paragraph of Plaintiffs’ Complaint, and then demanded 136 separate times that GEICO produce 

“all documents” that “prove” or “support” the individual allegations contained in each paragraph. 

See ECF 93-1. 

Plaintiffs therefore objected to the Subject Document Requests, noting that they were 

premature, in the nature of contention interrogatories, and purported to require Plaintiffs to 

exhaustively compile and produce “all documents” supporting every substantive allegation in their 

Complaint prior to the conclusion of discovery. See ECF 93-1. Plaintiffs also objected to various 

of the Subject Document Requests inasmuch as they were so overly broad that they purported to 

require Plaintiffs to make pretrial and expert disclosures in advance of the deadlines set forth in 

the Federal Rules and the Court’s scheduling order. Id. 

As Plaintiffs pointed out, and as discussed more fully below, federal courts in the 11th 

Circuit and elsewhere regularly hold that requests such as the Subject Document Requests – which 

purport to require a party to set forth all facts or produce all documents supporting their claims –

are unproductive, expensive, overly broad, and unduly burdensome. 

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As a result, courts in this District and others commonly defer responses to these kinds of 

requests until the substantial completion of other discovery, to the extent that they require 

responses at all. 

Accordingly, and as discussed herein, the Stein Defendants’ motion to compel should be 

denied, and their frivolous request for sanctions likewise should be denied. To the contrary, and 

pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(B), Plaintiffs should be awarded the reasonable costs and 

attorneys’ fees incurred in responding to this motion.

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ARGUMENT

I. The Subject Document Requests are in the Nature of Premature, Unduly 

Burdensome, and Overly Broad Contention Interrogatories

Though the Subject Document Requests are framed as requests for production under Rule 

34, rather than as interrogatories under Rule 33, they nonetheless are in the nature of premature, 

unduly burdensome, and overly broad contention interrogatories. In this context, contention 

interrogatories are “defined as questions that ask an opposing party to state the facts, evidence, or 

legal theories upon which it bases its specified contention(s) or that ask an opponent to explain his 

or her contention(s).” Sanzare v. QBE Specialty Ins. Co., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107482 at * 9 

(S.D. Fla. 2023). Here, instead of serving explicit contention interrogatories that purported to 

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In a misguided attempt to find support for their motion, the Stein Defendants lard their papers 

with conclusory recrimination, to the effect that GEICO’s claims lack merit, that GEICO lacks 

evidentiary support for its claims, that GEICO is acting in bad faith, and that GEICO’s objections 

to the Stein Defendants’ improper discovery requests somehow proves these points. See ECF No. 

93, pp. 5-6, 9. In actuality, the Stein Defendants’ contentions are belied by the extremely detailed 

facts set forth in GEICO’s Complaint (and proposed Amended Complaint), which pleads the 

Defendants’ fraudulent and unlawful activities in granular detail, including numerous, claimspecific examples of the Defendants’ fraudulent and unlawful conduct. See ECF Nos. 1, 80-1. At 

bottom, GEICO is perfectly willing to respond to appropriate discovery requests that comply with 

the Federal Rules, and – indeed – GEICO has already agreed to produce all of its relevant claims 

files and investigative files regarding the Defendants, among other materials. However, and as 

discussed herein, Plaintiffs should not be required to respond to the Subject Document Requests, 

which are improper and objectionable for various reasons. 

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require Plaintiffs to “identify” all documents that support each of 136 paragraphs in the Complaint, 

the Stein Defendants have tried to accomplish the same thing via the equally objectionable Subject 

Document Requests, which purport to require Plaintiffs to “produce” all documents supporting 

136 separate paragraphs of the Complaint. The improper effect is the same. 

While it true that these sorts of contention requests might possibly constitute a valid 

discovery tool when “used correctly”, “[i]t is a well accepted position that contention 

interrogatories are often premature until the end of discovery.” Christie v. Royal Caribbean

Cruises, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104863 at *4 (S.D. Fla. 2021)(emphasis added); see also Barbee

v. Goldstein (In re Reliance Fin. & Inv. Grp., Inc)., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 113863 at *10,11 (S.D. 

Fla. 2006)(“Due to the nature of contention interrogatories, they are more appropriately used after 

a substantial amount of discovery has been conducted–typically, at the end of the discovery 

period”); A.R. v. Dudek, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 179554 at *19 (S.D. Fla. 2015)(“there is 

considerable support for deferring answers to contention interrogatories until after a substantial 

amount of discovery has been completed”); In re Checking Account Overdraft Litig., 2010 U.S. 

Dist. LEXIS 133687 at *31-34 (S.D. Fla. 2010)(same). This is because requests that purport to 

require a detailed narrative of the opposing party’s case are overbroad and oppressive. See

Bingham v. Baycare Health Sys., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50940 at *5 (M.D. Fla. 2016).

Courts likewise apply these same principles to contention document requests such as the 

Subject Document Requests in the present case. See, e.g., Pierre v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., 2018 

U.S. Dist. LEXIS 225019 at *5-7 (S.D. Fla. 2018)(holding that a plaintiff did not need to respond 

to “contention-type discovery requests” – including, much like the Subject Document Requests in 

the present case, requests for production that sought “documents supporting allegations in specific 

paragraphs of Plaintiffs' Complaint” – until after discovery was complete); Houston Specialty Ins. 

Co. v. Titleworks of Southwest Fla., Inc., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 172808 at * 11 (M.D. Fla. 

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2016)(finding a request for “any and all documents” that support a contention facially overbroad 

and not sufficiently particularized); Schwarz v. City of Treasure Island, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 

147411 at * 10 (M.D. Fla. 2010)(denying – as overbroad and oppressive – motion to compel 

defendant to identify “any and all” documents relative to its contentions); Scigrip, Inc. v. 

Engineered Bonding Sols., LLC, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196564 at * 9 (M.D. Fla. 2016)(denying 

motion to compel response to contention document request, which sought “all documents that 

serve as the basis for, support, or refute the contentions or assertions in various paragraphs of the 

answer to the complaint”, because – much like the Subject Document Requests in the present case 

– it was overly broad); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(providing that requests for production “must 

describe with reasonable particularity each item or category of items to be inspected”); In re Dealer 

Mgmt. Sys. Antitrust Litig., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 197042 at * 22 - * 23 (N.D. Ill. 2018)(refusing 

to compel responses to requests for “all documents and communications related to Your suspicion, 

belief, or claims that any Defendant was engaged in any anticompetitive activity or that 

competition in any market has been harmed” and “all documents and communications” that 

plaintiffs “contend to be evidence of an illegal agreement between CDK and Reynolds”, because 

– much as in the present case – “requiring Plaintiffs now to lay out their entire case in response to 

these requests for production, and be faced with continuing to supplement their responses as they 

take discovery and develop their case, is premature and not proportional to the needs of the case.”); 

Devore v. City of Phila., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23522 at * 5 (E.D. Pa. 2002)(striking request for 

“[e]ach and every document which mentions, discusses, describes, relates to, refers to or embodies 

in any way Plaintiff's claims or damages or which Plaintiff intends to use in the prosecution of this 

case”, because “[b]road and undirected requests for all documents which relate in any way to the 

complaint are regularly stricken as too ambiguous.”).

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In this context, the Subject Document Requests are textbook examples of overbroad, 

oppressive, and premature contention-type discovery requests. As such, GEICO properly objected 

to them. Even so, in their motion to compel, the Stein Defendants argue that GEICO’s objection 

to the Subject Document Requests on the grounds that they are premature and in the nature of a 

contention interrogatories should be overruled because “[t]here is no such objection as 

“premature” in a Request for Production after the scheduling order is entered”. See ECF No. 93, 

p.4.

The Stein Defendants are mistaken. In fact, and as discussed above, courts often hold that 

contention requests – like the Subject Document Requests in the present case – are improper 

because they are premature, among other reasons.

For instance, in Pierre, supra, the court issued a scheduling order on March 28, 2018. See

Pierre et al v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc et al, S.D. Fla. Case No. 0:18-cv-60095-RAR, at ECF No.11. 

More than six months later, on October 17, 2018 – well after the court issued a scheduling order –

the Pierre court not only denied the defendant’s motion to compel the plaintiff to respond to 

contention-type discovery requests, but it further held that plaintiff did not need to respond to the 

contention-type discovery until “discovery [was] complete”. See Pierre at *7. See also Christie, 

Barbee, and Dudek, supra, which all also noted that contention type discovery requests are not 

appropriate until the end of discovery.

In this setting, it is unclear where the Stein Defendants come up with the notion that “[t]here 

is no such objection as ‘premature’ in a Request for Production after the scheduling order is 

entered”, and the one case they cite for this proposition does not actually stand for the proposition. 

In particular, the Stein Defendants cite to this Court’s decision in Casimir-Chery v. JTI (US)

Holding Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104152 (S.D. Fla. 2021)(Valle, J). But the decision in 

Casimir-Chery simply addressed a discovery dispute about whether discovery requests were 

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relevant and/or overbroad – it had nothing to do with whether the requests were premature or in 

the nature of a contention interrogatories.

As such, GEICO properly objected to the Subject Document Requests – in part – on this 

basis. Not only that, and contrary to the Stein Defendants’ false claim that GEICO’s objections 

were “boilerplate” – see ECF No. 93, p.5. – GEICO explained the basis for its objections and cited 

to two of the many cases that support its objections, namely Pierre and In re Checking, supra. 

Nonetheless, the Stein Defendants attempt to distinguish these two cases by claiming they are 

“interrogatory cases” – which, according to the Stein Defendants, apparently makes these cases 

distinguishable from the present case in which GEICO objected to document requests. See ECF 

No. 93, p.5. However, and as set forth above, the Stein Defendants are mistaken. Courts commonly 

sustain objections to contention-type document requests, just as they sustain objections to 

contention interrogatories. See, e.g., Pierre, supra; Houston Specialty Ins. Co., supra; Schwarz, 

supra; see also In re Dealer Mgmt. Sys., supra; Devore, supra.

It is easy to see why courts commonly find contention document requests to be improper 

and oppressive, and defer responses to such requests until after substantial discovery is completed, 

to the extent that they require responses at all. In particular, and as the In re Dealer Mgmt. Sys.

court pointed out, “requiring Plaintiffs now to lay out their entire case in response to these requests 

for production, and be faced with continuing to supplement their responses as they take discovery 

and develop their case, is premature and not proportional to the needs of the case.” See also Pierre, 

supra at * 6 (noting that forcing a party to respond to contention document requests early in the 

litigation “compounds the time, effort, and cost of litigation”, since the party very may well have 

to respond again later in discovery). 

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II. The Stein Defendants Ignore GEICO’s Other Objections to the Subject Document 

Requests

In addition to objecting to the Subject Document Requests because they are premature and

in the nature of contention interrogatories, GEICO also objected to many of them because the Stein 

Defendants’ request that GEICO produce “all documents” that “prove” or “support” its allegations 

also purports to require GEICO to make pre-trial and expert disclosures in advance of the Rule 26 

deadlines, as well as this Court’s case management deadlines. 

For instance, one group of documents that GEICO plans to rely upon at trial or summary 

judgment to “prove” or “support” its allegations are documents that will be prepared by its expert 

witnesses, and yet, pursuant to this Court’s scheduling order and Rule 26, GEICO is not due to 

produce its expert disclosures until November 8, 2023. See ECF No. 45, p.2.

Likewise, many of the other documents that GEICO will be using to “prove” its allegations 

are documents that Stein and their co-defendants possess – many of which they have not yet turned 

over – or are documents that do not yet exist (for instance deposition transcripts that GEICO may 

use at trial or on summary judgment to prove its allegations). This not only further underscores the 

premature nature of the Stein Defendants’ request that GEICO produce “all documents” that 

“support” or “prove” its allegations, but – pursuant to this Court’s case management order and 

Rule 26 – GEICO is not due to identify and produce many of these documents until February 2024. 

Id., p.3 (for example, GEICO is not due to file the depositions it will be using at trial until February 

25, 2024, and is not due to propose demonstrative exhibits until February 14, 2024).

III. The Stein Defendants’ Frivolous Request for Sanctions Should be Denied

The Stein Defendants include a frivolous request for “Rule 26 and Rule 11 sanctions” in 

their motion, but they advance no colorable basis for their request. Instead, they simply posit, in 

conclusory fashion, that sanctions supposedly are warranted because Plaintiffs supposedly 

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“provided no basis for the objections” to the Subject Document Requests, and somehow, at the 

same time, “misstated the local rulings to support their objections”. See ECF No. 93, p. 5.

In fact, and as set forth above, Plaintiffs have provided ample basis for their objections to 

the Subject Document Requests, including citations to various cases sustaining objections to 

similarly-improper contention-type discovery requests. Leaving aside their conclusory 

recrimination, the Stein Defendants never get around to explaining how Plaintiffs actually 

“misstated” the decisions from any of these cases. 

More generally – and underscoring the frivolousness of their sanctions request – the Stein 

Defendants never served any safe harbor letter under Rule 11, never specify what aspect of Rule 

11 or Rule 26 provides for sanctions in this context, and do not make any plausible legal argument, 

or offer anything but conclusory statements, to demonstrate that sanctions are warranted. In fact, 

Rule 26 does not provide for sanctions in this context, and neither does Rule 11. See Incardone v.

Royal Carribean Cruises, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 231454 at * 10 (S.D. Fla. 2019)(Rule 11 “does 

not apply to disclosures and discovery requests, responses [and] objections ...”).

IV. The Court Should Award Attorneys’ Fees and Costs to Plaintiffs, Pursuant to Rule 

37(a)(5)(B)

As discussed above, the Stein Defendants’ motion to compel lacks merit, and – indeed –

the motion is largely based on conclusory and false recrimination, rather than reasoned legal 

argument. The Stein Defendants go so far as to waste the Court’s time and Plaintiffs’ time with an 

utterly baseless request for sanctions under Rule 11 and Rule 26. 

Accordingly, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court award them the reasonable costs 

and attorneys’ fees incurred in responding to this motion, pursuant to Rule 37(a)(5)(B). 

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CONCLUSION

For the reasons set forth above, the Stein Defendants’ motion to compel and request for 

sanctions should be denied, and Plaintiffs should be awarded the reasonable costs and attorneys’ 

fees incurred in responding to this motion. 

Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Max S. Gershenoff

Max Gershenoff (FBN 1038855)

John P. Marino (FBN 814539) 

Kristen Wenger (FBN 92136)

Lindsey R. Trowell (FBN 678783)

Yonatan Meir Bernstein (FBN 1035899)

RIVKIN RADLER, LLP

Riverplace Tower

1301 Riverplace Blvd.

Suite 1000

Jacksonville, FL 32207

Phone: (904) 791-8948

Facsimile: (904) 598-6225

Max.Gershenoff@rivkin.com

John.Marino@rivkin.com

Kristen.Wenger@rivkin.com

Lindsey.Trowell@rivkin.com

Yonatan.Bernstein@rivkin.com

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I certify that on July 26, 2023, I electronically filed the foregoing document with the Clerk 

of the Court using the CM/ECF system, which will provide notice and this document to the counsel 

of record in this case. 

/s/ Max Gershenoff

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