(PC) Penton v. Hubard

[7] 8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA [10] 11 ANTHONY PENTON, No. 2: 11-cv-0518 TLN KJN P 12 Plaintiff, 13 v. ORDER 14 L. JOHNSON, et al., 15 Defendants. [16] 17 Plaintiff is a state prisoner, proceeding through counsel, with a civil rights action pursuant 18 to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . On August 19, 2019, the undersigned held a telephonic informal discovery 19 conference addressing pending contention interrogatories propounded to plaintiff in early 2019. 20 Plaintiff was represented by Kourtney Kinsel, Attorney at Law. Deputy Attorney General Van 21 Kamberian appeared for defendants Walker, Virga, Donahoo, Bradford, Pool, Morrow, Gaddi, 22 Quinn, Lynch, Salas, and Besenaiz. Nicole M. Cahill, Attorney at Law, appeared for defendant 23 Johnson. 24 Upon review of the joint letter brief, and upon hearing the arguments of counsel, the 25 request that plaintiff be required to provide further responses to the pending contention 26 interrogatories is denied as overly broad and unduly burdensome. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C) 27 (stating that the court must limit discovery if the burden of the proposed discovery outweighs its 28 likely benefit); Tubbs v. Sacramento County Jail, 2008 WL 863974 , *1 (E.D. Cal. 2008), citing 1 | Lucero v. Valdez, 240 F.R.D. 591, 594 (D. N.M. 2007) (“[c]Jontention interrogatories should not 2 || require a party to provide the equivalent of a narrative account of its case, including every 3 | evidentiary fact... .”). Such denial is without prejudice to defendants filing a specific and 4 | targeted motion if plaintiff makes supplemental disclosures or if there are missing material 5 | responses in plaintiffs deposition transcript, following, of course, a good faith effort to meet and 6 | confer prior to the filing of such motion. The court also remains available for informal telephonic 7 | discovery dispute hearings. 8 Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the request for further responses to the 9 | contention interrogatories (ECF No. 163) is denied without prejudice. 10 | Dated: August 21, 2019 Arse A Abar 12 KENDALL J. NE UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE [13] /pent0518.0ah