Premier Comp Sols. LLC v. UPMC Health Network, Inc.
Citation:2017 WL 11680912 (W.D. Pa. 2017)
Summary:The Court noted that ESI was relevant to the case and ordered the parties to produce such information in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court granted the UPMC Defendants' motion to compel in part and denied it in part, and denied Plaintiff's motion to compel production of documents.
Court:United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania
Date decided:
Judge:Cercone, David Stewart
PREMIER COMP SOLUTIONS LLC, Plaintiff, v. UPMC HEALTH NETWORK, INC., a Pennsylvania non-profit non-stock corporation, UPMC BENEFIT MANAGEMENT SERVICES, INC., d/b/a UPMC WORKPARTNERS, UPMC HEALTH BENEFITS, INC., d/b/a UPMC WORKPARTNERS, and MCMC, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of York Risk Management, Defendants 2:15cv703 United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania Filed March 08, 2017 Counsel Stanley M. Stein, Stanley M. Stein, PC, Pittsburgh, PA, Jeffrey S. Jacobovitz, Pro Hac Vice, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff. Daniel K. Oakes, Richard B. Dagen, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP, Washington, DC, Thomas G. Rohback, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider, LLP, Hartford, CT, for Defendant UPMC Health Network, Inc. Daniel K. Oakes, Pro Hac Vice, Richard B. Dagen, Pro Hac Vice, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP, Washington, DC, Peter S. Wolff, Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, LLP, Pittsburgh, PA, Thomas G. Rohback, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider, LLP, Hartford, CT, for Defendants UPMC Benefit Management Services, Inc., UPMC Health Benefits, Inc. Curtis M. Schaffner, Katelyn M. O'Connor, Paul S. Mazeski, Stephenie G. Anderson, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, Pittsburgh, PA, for Defendant MCMC, LLC. Cercone, David Stewart, United States District Judge Memorandum Order *1 Before the Court are three (3) discovery motions: (1) Motion to Compel Plaintiff to Respond to Interrogatories and Produce Documents (Document No. 78) filed on behalf of the UPMC Defendants; (2) Motion to Compel Production of Documents (Document No. 80) filed on behalf of Plaintiff, Premier Comp Solutions LLC (“Plaintiff” or “Premier”); and (3) Motion to Compel Plaintiff to Respond to Interrogatories and Produce Documents (Document No. 96) filed on behalf of the UPMC Defendants. The parties have responded to the motions and the motions are now before the Court. 1. UPMC Defendants’ First Motion to Compel The UPMC Defendants seek an order to compel Premier to provide full and complete responses to Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11 of Defendants’ First Set of Interrogatories and Requests for Production Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 49 from Defendants’ First Set of Requests for the Production of Documents. With regard to Interrogatory No. 1, the UPMC Defendants admit that Premier has identified 44,635 employer locations at which it provides either panel generation, panel maintenance, telephonic injury management, physician appointment scheduling and/or MRI diagnostic and/or PT appointment scheduling, 1,163 insurance carriers and or TPA locations that PCS has billed for PT and/or MRI network services, and about 230 clients who received repricing and medical bill review services. UPMC, however, contends Premier failed to provide the terms of those agreements, has not identified the services that each employer allegedly received, and has not adequately explained the information it did provide. Premier argues that it identified the services which it provides pursuant to those agreements, but UPMC does not need to know the other terms of the agreements. The Court agrees that the services provided under the agreements adequately respond to the Interrogatory. With regard to the individual specific services provided to each and every employer, the Court finds such request unduly burdensome. The Court, however, agrees that Premier should provide an explanation of the meaning of the columns for each of Premier's Exhibits A, B & C in order for UPMC to be able to understand the information produced. In Interrogatory No. 2, the UPMC Defendants requested that Premier state its annual revenues, unit sales, costs, operating income and net income, in aggregate and for each service and product that provided for each customer since 2010. Premier referenced its financial statements that contained that information for the years requested, except that PCS objected that it did not have the ability to calculate the unit operating costs, administrative costs, and network income for each individual customer and for each separate service. Based upon Premier's detailed explanation why such information is not available, UPMC motion to compel responses to Interrogatory No. 2 is denied. *2 UPMC Defendants’ Interrogatories 4 and 5 ask Premier to identify, among other things, Premier's employees who communicated with each of the UPMC Defendants. UPMC contends that Premier failed to list a single name. Premier will be ordered to list the names of its employees that communicated with the UPMC Defendants and to fully respond to Interrogatory No. 5. With regard to Interrogatory No. 7, Premier shall provide all information requested therein upon which its damage calculation is based. Interrogatory No. 8 requests that Premier substantiate its allegations in Paragraph 196 of the Amended Complaint that “PCS has lost clients and market share” based on Defendants’ alleged conduct. Premier made the allegations, therefore, Premier should substantiate such allegations by responding fully to Interrogatory No. 8. Premier shall also respond to Interrogatory No. 10 as modified in footnote 5 of Defendants’ motion to compel. Finally, Premier shall fully respond to Interrogatory No. 11. With regard to Premiers responses to UPMC's requests for Production, the Court agrees that such responses are insufficient. Moreover, the fact that Premier produced 19,000 pages of documents in a parallel state case is irrelevant to this federal antitrust action. UPMC's motion to compel the production of documents will be granted. 2. UPMC Defendants’ First Motion to Compel In Request for Production No. 8 in Premier's First Set of Requests for Production of Documents served on the UPMC Defendants, Premier requests: All documents provided or served by UPMC in compliance with UPMC's obligations to produce Rule 26(a) F.R.Civ.P. voluntary disclosures in the case of Royal Mile Company, Inc. v. UPMC, et al, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, at Case #2:10-cv-01609-JFC. The UPMC Defendants objected on the basis of relevance and burden. In August, 2007, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ”) initiated an investigation into the activities of UPMC and others as part of a national probe into health care and insurance marketplaces. During the investigation, UPMC produced to the DOJ millions of documents. In addition, the DOJ took 12 to 14 depositions of executive employees of UPMC (collectively the “DOJ Materials). The DOJ terminated its investigation in September, 2011. By its motion, Premier requests that this Court order that the UPMC Defendants produce the DOJ Materials in the instant action. Pursuant to Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “parties 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.” Fed. R. Civ. P 26(b)(1). The limitations on relevance imposed by the amended Rule 26 was explained in Cole's Wexford Hotel, Inc. v. Highmark, Inc., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 127793 (W.D. Pa. Sept. 20, 2016): The 2015 amendment to Rule 26(b)(1) “deleted the ‘subject matter involved in the action’ from the scope of discovery,” i.e., deleted a court's authority to order discovery of matter relevant to the subject matter of a case. Id. at *33. To continue to hold that discovery is relevant under 26(b)(1) if there is “any possibility that the information may be relevant to the general subject matter of the action,” is erroneous. Id. at *32. A party moving to compel discovery bears the initial burden of proving the relevance of the requested information. Cope v. Brosius, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139679, at *6 (M.D. Pa. Oct. 7, 2016) (citing Morrison v. Philadelphia Housing Auth., 203 F.R.D. 195, 196 (E.D. Pa. 2001)). If a discovery request is not relevant to the requesting party's claims or defenses, or is not proportional to the needs of the case, the reviewing court should deny the discovery request. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1); see EEOC v. Univ. of Pa., 850 F.2d 969, 979 (3d Cir. 1988) (noting that “relevancy is the touchstone of any discovery request”). *3 Once that initial burden is met, “the party resisting the discovery has the burden to establish the lack of relevance by demonstrating that the requested discovery (1) does not come within the broad scope of relevance as defined under [Rule] 26(b)(1), or (2) is of such marginal relevance that the potential harm occasioned by discovery would outweigh the ordinary presumption in favor of broad disclosure.” Cope v. Brosius, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 139679 at *6 (quoting In re Urethane Antitrust Litigation, 261 F.R.D. 570, 573 (D. Kan. 2009)). The Royal Mile case involved the markets for “tertiary and quaternary care services” and “healthcare.” The issues in the instant case involve Workers’ Compensation related services and Workers’ Compensation insurance. Merely because the subject matter of the DOJ investigation involved antitrust law in healthcare does not make the DOJ Materials relevant to the specific claims at issue here. Moreover, the alleged markets, the time period and the participants in the instant action are different than those covered by the requested DOJ Materials. Further, the requested DOJ Materials are outdated. The DOJ investigation that generated the requested materials was closed, without an enforcement action, in 2011. The depositions that are a part of the materials took place in 2008 and 2009. Premier's allegations herein, however, implicate conduct by UPMC WorkPartners on and after 2014. Because Premier is unable to show the DOJ materials are relevant to its specific claims in this action, the motion to compel will be denied. 3. UPMC Defendants’ Second Motion to Compel After a review of the UPMC Defendants’ motion and Premier's response, the Court finds that Premier must produce full and complete responses to the UPMC Defendants’ Interrogatory Nos. 13 through 25, and shall produce all non-privileged documents responsive to Defendants’ Requests for Production Nos. 56, 57, 58, 60, 69, 75 and 77. Accordingly, Order of Court AND NOW, upon consideration of the motions to compel and the response thereto, in accordance with the accompanying Memorandum, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED as follows: (1) Defendants’ Motion to Compel Plaintiff to Respond to Interrogatories and Produce Documents (Document No. 78) is granted in part and denied in part. The motion is denied with regard to Interrogatories Nos. 1 & 2 to the extent set forth in the Memorandum. The motion to compel is granted in all other aspects as set forth in Section 1 of the Memorandum; (2) Plaintiff's Motion to Compel Production of Documents (Document No. 80) is DENIED; and (3) Defendants’ Motion to Compel Plaintiff to Respond to Interrogatories and Produce Documents (Document No. 96) is GRANTED. Plaintiff shall produce full and complete responses to the UPMC Defendants’ Interrogatories Nos. 13 through 25, and shall produce all non-privileged documents responsive to Defendants’ Requests for Production Nos. 56, 57, 58, 60, 69, 75 and 77.