Court grants motion to compel further answers to interrogatories aimed at requiring the Plaintiff to provide the specific basis for the claims asserted and to identify the specific documents that would support those claims, despite Plaintiff’s assertion that such interrogatories required expert opinion and expert discovery was not yet complete.
Plaintiffs represent a class of plan participants in an ERISA Class Action complaint against T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (“T. Rowe”), alleging that T. Rowe favored its own funds and used higher-priced funds that resulted in more than $100 million in losses or lost performance for plan participants. T. Rowe issued a set of interrogatories to Plaintiffs and those interrogatories contained a number of “contention interrogatories.” As the Court explains, contention interrogatories are “interrogatories wherein the requesting party seeks the factual basis for contentions asserted in a pleading.” In particular, eight of T. Rowe’s interrogatories seek answers to questions that begin with: “State all facts and identify all Documents and Communications that You believe support Your contention that …” and then cite a specific allegation from the Plaintiffs’ class complaint. This includes seeking the specific plan investment options that had “excessive or unreasonable fees” and the “comparable funds” that Plaintiffs contend were more appropriate.
Plaintiffs object to these contention interrogatories as being “premature, overly broad, unduly burdensome, and/or compound.” Plaintiffs’ principal argument asserts that the responses to the interrogatories require an expert opinion and that such opinions are not yet due and have not been formed. Thus, responses should be delayed until after the close of expert discovery. In reviewing the interrogatories, the Court finds that only one (which sought computational information) actually requires expert analysis. Rather, according to the Court, the interrogatories simply “seek to discover exactly what evidence Plaintiffs expect to relay upon” and, the Court observes, “[t]hat is the core purpose of discovery ….”
The Court acknowledges that “many courts disfavor ‘early’ contention interrogatories, and postpone the responding party’s answers until at or near the close of discovery ….” Here, though, discovery has been going on for almost a year at this point and fact discovery has closed.
As the Court explains, “Plaintiffs’ objection of ‘prematurity’ may well have been valid when the discovery was first propounded and during the initial pendency” of the case, but now that fact discovery is complete, “Defendants should not be required to wait any longer to explore the specific factual basis underlying” the complaint, “even if experts will further expound on these areas.” The court further instructs that Plaintiffs’ responses “should not simply reiterate phrases from their Second Amended Complaint” and should “avoid the phrase ‘including but not limited to’ or similar phrases.” The documents Plaintiffs will rely on “should either be produced or described with sufficient specificity (such as Bates number within a document production) to allow Defendants to locate them.”
While this constitutes a win for the Defendants, the Court also acknowledges some of Plaintiffs’ concerns about the limiting effect of these responses and make it clear Plaintiffs would not be punished if a good faith effort is made. In particular, the Court said there was no need to use limiting language in any responses as “it shall be recognized that the facts or documents so identified represent Plaintiffs’ best efforts at the point of supplementation, and that they have the ability (and duty) to timely supplement their answers ….” Furthermore, the responses would not limit the experts in any way, as Plaintiffs have worried; regardless of the responses, Plaintiffs’ experts “may base opinions upon additional or different information, and express opinions more expansive than or different from Plaintiffs’ supplemental responses ….”
(S. Edwards) (SOLA Ref. No. 2019-48-05)
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