Phillips v. Boilermaker-Blacksmith Nat'l Pension Tr.

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THOMAS ALLEN PHILLIPS, et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOILERMAKER-BLACKSMITH NATIONAL PENSION TRUST, et al., Defendants.

No. 19-2402-TC-BGS

United States District Court, D. Kansas

July 19, 2024

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART MOTION TO COMPEL

Brooks G. Severson, United States Magistrate Judge

This matter comes before the Court on Plaintiffs' Motion to Compel Recordings of Defendants' Calls with Class Members. See generally Doc. 300. Defendants oppose the motion arguing that the discovery sought is not proportional to the needs of the case. See generally Doc 303.

For the reasons stated herein, the motion is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.^[1]

I. Background Facts

This dispute concerns the administration of employee benefits in defined pension and retirement health plans. Plaintiffs bring this class action on behalf of themselves and all others situated, and asserts claims against Boilermaker-Blacksmith Pension Trust, Board of Trustees of the Boilermaker-Blacksmith National Pension Trust, and six individual trustees.^[2] Plaintiffs participated in a multi-employer defined benefit pension plan governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U.S.C. § 1001, et seq. (“ERISA”) and worked as a boilermaker for at least one employer that was party to an International Brotherhood of Boilermakers collective bargaining agreement which required pension contributions. Plaintiffs filed this lawsuit as a putative class action concerning the administration of their pension and retirement health plans. They allege that Defendants violated various ERISA requirements and improperly denied Plaintiffs their early retirement benefits.

Highly summarized, Plaintiffs allege that they retired from their boilermaker jobs before normal retirement age and then applied for-and received-early retirement pension benefits. Plaintiffs later resumed work in another type of job (i.e electrician, safety coordinator, steam fitter scheduler/planner), but did not engage in any postretirement boilermaker work. Plaintiffs subsequently received letters notifying them that because they had begun work for another employer who contributed to the Plan, they were no longer entitled to early retirement benefits. Four named Plaintiffs filed a putative class action lawsuit alleging, inter alia, that the Pension Trust is imposing an unwritten 90-day “separation from service” rule (“90-day rule”) which Plaintiffs call a Plan amendment, in its eligibility determinations. Under this rule, if a participant engages in any work for an alleged contributing employer within 90 days of retiring from his or her boilermaker job-even if completely unrelated to boilermaker work- the Pension Trust will automatically conclude that participant lacked a true intent to retire and will deny benefits.

On October 14, 2019, Plaintiffs served its first set of Requests for Production (“RFP”) on Defendants which encompassed twenty-seven requests, including RFP 8, 9, and 19^[3] which are discussed in this Order. See Doc. 28. Defendants objected to RFP 8, 9, and 19 claiming that the requests were overbroad and asked for irrelevant information. Nonetheless, Defendants, “without waiving those objections,” either produced some documents that were responsive to each RFP or referred Plaintiffs to documents that were responsive to other RFPs.^[4] Id. Moreover, Defendants produced 109 audio recordings of phone calls associated with the four named plaintiffs in response to Plaintiffs' request for production of audio recordings relating to all class members between March 10 and May 11, 2020. Such recordings have been used in depositions of Plaintiffs and referenced in multiple filings. Plaintiffs then filed a motion for class certification on August 7, 2020 (See Doc. 100), which was granted on August 31, 2023. See Doc. 266.

Defendants were required to supplement discovery responses by January 12, 2024. Doc. 272, at 2. On February 19, 2024, Plaintiffs' counsel notified Defendants of their failure to produce class members recordings pursuant to the previously mentioned requests for production of documents and renewed its request for production of such recordings. Defendants objected to producing calls for all the class members and the parties conferred regarding the same. A compromise was reached where Defendants agreed to produce written call logs for ten class members identified by Plaintiffs, after which Plaintiffs would identify what calls they wanted Defendants to produce. Plaintiffs identified the ten class members on March 8, 2024, and Defendants provided the call logs on March 28, 2024. On April 3, 2024, Plaintiffs identified 144 calls to be produced by Defendants (out of 267 calls on the logs). On May 2, 2024, Defendants produced nine of the call recordings requested by Plaintiffs but notified Plaintiffs that “the process of retrieving the requested recordings has proved even more burdensome than anticipated,” because the recordings were not maintained in a format in which participant identifying information and timing of the calls were easily discernible. The remaining 135 recordings of the previously agreed upon sample remain to be produced. To date, Defendants have produced a total of 118 calls related to the Plaintiffs.

After satisfying their obligations to meet and confer and engaging the Court in a pre-motion discovery conference pursuant to D. Kan. Rule 37.1 and 37.2, Plaintiffs filed the present motion. Plaintiffs move to compel Defendants responses to Plaintiffs' RFPs 8, 9, and 19 and produce all recordings between Defendants and the 111 class members. Plaintiffs claim that they are entitled to the recordings and that Defendants cannot meet their burden to show that the burden imposed to produce such recordings is disproportionate to the needs of the case. Defendants object that Plaintiffs' requested production is not responsive to Plaintiffs' RFP 8, but they do not offer an objection related to the responsiveness of RFPs 9 and 19. Defendants further argue that Plaintiffs' request is unduly burdensome given the marginal relevance of the recordings, and invokes HIPAA concerns. Plaintiffs' motion is ripe, and the Court is prepared to rule.

II. Legal Standard

Rule 26(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governs the scope of discovery. It provides:

[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at state in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.

Accordingly, the requested information must be “nonprivileged, relevant, and proportional to the needs of the case to be discoverable.” United States ex rel. Schroeder v. Medtronic, Inc., No. 17-2060-DDC-KGG, 2023 WL 3224180, at *2 (D. Kan. May 3, 2023).

Discovery requests must be relevant on their face. Id. Relevance is “construed broadly to encompass any matter that bears on, or that reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or may be in the case.” Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 351 (1978). See also Fish v. Kobach, 321 F.R.D. 395, 399 (D. Kan. 2017). There is a general presumption in favor of disclosure at the discovery stage. See In re Motor Fuel Temp. Sales Practices Litigation, No. 07-MD-1840-KHV, 2009 WL 959493, at *4 (D. Kan. Apr. 3, 2009). “Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable ... [and] should proceed unless it is clear that the information can have no possible bearing on the claims or defense of a party.” VoteAmerica v. Schwab, No. 21-2253-KHV-GEB, 2022 WL 1801059, at *2 (D. Kan. June 2, 2022).

“If the discovery sought appears relevant, the party resisting discovery has the burden to establish the lack of relevancy by demonstrating that the requested discovery (1) does not come within the scope of relevancy as defined under Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1), or (2) is of such marginal relevancy that the potential harm occasioned by discovery would outweigh the ordinary presumption in favor of broad disclosure.” Ramsey v. Snorkel Int'l, Inc., No. 2:23-CV-2468-EFM-TJJ, 2024 WL 1834365, at *2 (D. Kan. Apr. 26, 2024). If relevancy is not apparent on its face, the party seeking discovery has the burden to demonstrate that the requests are relevant. Sperry, 2020 WL 5642343 at *3.

“[D]iscovery must be both relevant and proportional to the needs of the case.” VoteAmerica, 2022 WL 1801059, at *3. Whether information is proportional to the needs of the case depends upon “the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to relevant information, the parties' resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1); Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Cimarron Crossing Feeders, LLC, No. 16-CV-1094-JTM-TJJ, 2017 WL 4770702, at *4 (D. Kan. Oct. 19, 2017) (citation omitted).

If a party claims that a discovery request is unduly burdensome that party must show “the burden or expense is unreasonable in light of the benefits to be secured from the discovery.” KPH Healthcare Servs., Inc. v. Mylan, N.V., No. 20-CV-02065-DDC-TJJ, 2022 WL 17250193, at *2 (D. Kan. Nov. 28, 2022). Typically, this must be established by “an affidavit or other evidentiary...