Helmert v. Butterball, LLC

2010 WL 2179180 (E.D. Ark. 2010)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Ps sued D alleging violations of the FLSA and Arkansas law. Ps alleged that they were not fully compensated for time spent donning, doffing, and sanitizing protective gear and equipment. Ps filed a motion for collective action under the FLSA and class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. The Court granted Ps' motion for collective action and denied their motion for class certification. Ps served their first set of requests for production of documents. D produced 800 documents. In addition, it conducted a search for the phrase 'donning and doffing' in the active and archived email boxes of 22 Butterball custodians--every custodian who had received a litigation hold notice in May 2007. D produced 87 emails. D maintains that 'it has produced all e-mail communications relevant to the subject matter of these [sic] lawsuit.' Ps note that, on March 9, 2010, they received three additional email communications relevant to their case that should have been retrieved in the initial search. P requested that D conduct another ESI search with an expanded list of eleven additional custodians and 52 additional search terms. D refused and claimed that the requests were unduly burdensome and 'would not lead to the discovery of any additional admissible evidence.' D conducted the proposed search on the emails of Gary Lenaghan, the individual D believed was 'most likely to have additional discoverable emails.' The search terms returned a total of 11,713 emails from Lenaghan's active and archived folders. 'It took 2.5 hours simply to retrieve the emails, almost none of which related to donning and doffing. Those that did relate to donning and doffing have already been produced.' Ps made another request for additional e-discovery. D conditioned its cooperation on Ps narrowing the list of additional custodians and search terms' under two conditions: the plaintiffs allow Butterball two months to conduct the search, and the plaintiffs refuse to ask for any further electronic discovery. Numerous meetings occurred with various solutions proposed, but no agreements were reached on these matters of discovery. Ps filed a motion to compel discovery of information resulting from a search of 70 separate terms from all possible sources of ESI belonging to 43 Butterball custodians dating back to 2000. D argues that a search of ESI beyond that which the defendant proposes will be unreasonably duplicative of the information that has already been provided and will impose a significant burden and expense upon D. D contends that some of the ESI that the plaintiffs want searched is not reasonably accessible and that the plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden of showing good cause for conducting a search of that information.