IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

RONALD ARGENTO, et al., ) 

) 

 Plaintiffs, ) 

) 

vs. ) 

) 

SYLVANIA LIGHTING SERVICES CORP., ) 

) No. 2:15-cv-01605-HRH

Defendant. ) 

_______________________________________) 

O R D E R

 Motion to Compel1

Plaintiffs move to compel the Clark County School District to produce additional

documents in response to a subpoena. The motion is opposed by the school district2

 and

by defendant.3

The subpoena in question originated in a related case, Argento v. Sylvania

Lighting Services Corp., No. 2:13-cv-00351. In the -351 Argento case, by order of

August 26, 2014, the court addressed the production of the records which are the subject

of the instant motion. In that order, the court observed: 

1Docket No. 15. The motion to compel was originally filed in the District of

Nevada where the subpoenaed records were to have been produced. Based upon

Rule 45(f), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Nevada court transferred plaintiff’s

motion to compel to this court, where a new file was opened under the above case

number. 

2Docket No. 19. 

3Docket No. 24. 

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 Plaintiffs seek alarm system reports and security logs

through their subpoenas to third parties. There is apparently

conflicting evidence as to whose employees were responsible

for arming and disarming school alarm systems at the

beginning and end of the work day. These records may be

relevant or lead to relevant information if the records

maintained by the third-party employers of defendant either

disclose the identity of persons arming or disarming the

security system or disclose the identity of non-school

employees who are admitted and also record the dates and

times associated with alarm system and/or access activity.[4]

In the -351 Argento case, the court took up a further motion to enforce the

subpoena, which resulted in the court’s order of April 8, 2015,5 denying the motion

because it had been brought in the wrong district. However, anticipating what has in fact

taken place, the court’s April 8 order closed with the observation that “[p]laintiffs may

move to reinstate the instant motion when and if the matter of enforcement of the

plaintiffs’ subpoena is transferred by the Nevada District Court to this court.”6 The court

now takes up plaintiffs’ motion to compel for purposes of both this and the -0351 Argento

case. 

In responding to the motion to compel, defendant argues that plaintiffs’ motion to

compel is tardy. While it is true that the motion to compel process was commenced by

plaintiffs at the very end of the time specified for discovery motion practice, the initial

motion was timely filed. It is unfortunate that this court felt constrained to pass plaintiffs’

motion to compel to the Nevada District Court, but that is what Rule 45(d)(2)(B)(i)

requires – even though, as set out above, this court perceived that there was a high

4Order – Motion to Quash Subpoenas (Aug. 26, 2014) at 2, Docket No. 110 in

Argento v. Sylvania Lighting Services Corp., No. 2:13-cv-00351. 

5Order – Motion to Enforce Subpoena (Apr. 8, 2015), Docket No. 179 in Argento

v. Sylvania Lighting Services Corp., No. 2:13-cv-00351

6

Id. at 2. 

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probability that plaintiffs’ motion to compel would be transferred back to this court. In

this instance, Rule 45(d)(2)(B)(i) was not very helpful. 

The records that plaintiffs seek from the school district are sought in the hope that

they will shed some light on hours worked by several of the plaintiffs during their

employment with defendant on a contract between the defendant and the school district. 

The school district has produced voluminous records for the plaintiffs pursuant to the

subpoena. There is no evidence before the court to suggest that the school district has in

any fashion endeavored to avoid the production of records within its possession or

control7that might reflect the identity of defendant employees who entered school district

premises or the times of their departures from school district premises. 

The specific records sought by plaintiffs are alarm code records and call log and

dispatch records from the school district and its police department. Based upon the

school district’s response to plaintiffs’ motion to compel, the court is convinced that the

records plaintiffs seek do not exist in any reasonably recoverable form. Neither plaintiffs

nor the school district have any record of the access codes assigned to particular

employees who may have accessed school district premises. Without the access codes, it

is not reasonably possible to identify whose employees armed or disarmed the school

district’s security system. If, as has been suggested, there was but one access code for a

school, it would not be possible to identify who was entering or leaving school premises. 

The school district employee who assigned user numbers is deceased, and the school

district’s third-party vendor has been unable to provide user numbers assigned to Sylvania

7The court is persuaded that the Clark County School District police department is

an entity controlled by the school district, and that the school district has appropriately

responded to the instant motion for itself and its police department. 

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workers. A search for these numbers has been undertaken by the school district without

success. 

There are similar difficulties with school district police department call logs and

dispatch records. The police department’s telephone recording program does not have the

capability of responding to queries by telephone number. The school district police

department recordings of calls to the dispatch center are not segregated by caller. As a

practical matter, there is no reasonable means of identifying calls made by defendant

employees when they departed school district premises. 

The court concludes that the school district has no reasonably accessible records

that would disclose the identity of persons arming or disarming school building security

systems or differentiating between non-school district employees and school district

employees. The court concludes that school district police department recordings cannot

be searched reasonably to identify non-school district employees’ calls to the dispatch

center. 

The motion to compel is denied. This case is closed. 

DATED at Anchorage, Alaska, this 10th day of September, 2015. 

/s/ H. Russel Holland 

United States District Judge 

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