The changes to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 that took effect 16 months ago were part of a package of amendments to the Rules fueled by common problems caused or intensified by modern e-discovery and the volume of electronically stored information (ESI). In its memorandum to the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure wrote that the amended language to Rule 34 “should eliminate three relatively frequent problems in the production of documents and ESI: the use of broad, boilerplate objections that provide little information about the true reason a party is objecting; responses that state various objections, produce some information, and do not indicate whether anything else has been withheld from discovery on the basis of the objections; and responses which state that responsive documents will be produced in due course, without providing any indication of when production will occur and which often are followed by long delays in production. All three practices lead to discovery disputes and are contrary to Rule 1′s goals of speedy and inexpensive litigation.”
The changes to Rule 34, however, have not received much attention from practitioners and judges, especially when compared to other changes, such as those to Rules 26 and 37. Recently, though, two judges who have had it with boilerplate responses and objections garnered attention by releasing fiery decisions promising sanctions for any future discovery response that fails to comply with amended Rule 34 or other Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
‘Fischer v. Forrest’
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