DR. DANIEL GRUENSTEIN, Plaintiff, v. LAURI SUE BROWNING and THERESA WOOD, Defendants No. 17-cv-02328 United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division Filed: September 28, 2019 Counsel Robert Thomas Kuehl, Kuehl Law, P.C., St. Charles, IL, for Plaintiff. Raeesabbas Mohamed, Pro Hac Vice, RM Warner, PLC, Scottsdale, AZ, Stephen Michael Donnelly, Parikh Law Group, LLC, Chicago, IL, for Defendant Lauri Sue Browning. Wood, Andrea R., United States District Judge ORDER *1 Defendants’ Motion to Compel [58] is granted. Plaintiff shall respond to Defendants’ Interrogatories Nos. 4 and 8 and Request for Production No. 8 by first providing a copy of Defendants’ discovery requests to the University of Minnesota and Dr. John Bass (the other parties bound by the withheld settlement agreement) by no later than 10/7/2019. If the University of Minnesota and Dr. Bass do not object within 14 days, Plaintiff shall produce the withheld settlement agreement and any other related documents within 7 days thereafter. See the accompanying Statement for details. STATEMENT Plaintiff Daniel Gruenstein, a pediatrician, has sued Defendants Lauri Sue Browning and Theresa Wood, alleging that Defendants made false statements and fabricated reviews of Gruenstein on physician-review websites. Before the Court is Defendants’ motion to compel Gruenstein's responses to certain interrogatories and an accompanying request for production relating to Gruenstein's former employment with and eventual separation from the University of Minnesota (“University’). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allow parties to “obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Evidence is relevant if it tends to make the existence of any fact of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. Fed. R. Evid. 401. “Relevant information need not be admissible at the trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). The objecting party bears the burden of establishing why a particular discovery request is improper. Kodish v. Oakbrook Terrace Fire Prot. Dist., 235 F.R.D. 447, 450 (N.D. Ill. 2006) (internal citation omitted). Defendants seek information related to Gruenstein's former employment with and eventual separation from the University. Defendants’ Interrogatory No. 4 asks Gruenstein to “[i]dentify every individual, including any employee or agent of the University of Minnesota, you have ever alleged to have sabotaged or otherwise impaired your career opportunities with the University of Minnesota.” (Defs.’ Mot. to Compel Resp. to Written Discovery (“Mot. to Compel”) at 4, Dkt. No. 58.) Defendants’ Interrogatory No. 8 asks Gruenstein to “[i]dentify any other instance(s) where you have either threatened litigation over alleged defamation against any third party or where you have initiated litigation over alleged defamation.” (Id.) Gruenstein responded to both interrogatories in a similar fashion: he claimed that the interrogatories sought (1) irrelevant information, and (2) information that Gruenstein could not provide because doing so would violate his settlement agreement with the University. (Mot. to Compel Ex. 3 at 5–6, 8, Dkt. No. 58-3.) As to Interrogatory No. 8, Gruenstein offered that “apart from the litigation with the University of Minnesota and the instant litigation involving the Requesting Parties, he has never threatened litigation for defamation ....” (Id. Ex. 3 at 8.) Also at issue is Defendants’ Request for Production No. 8, which seeks “[a]ny and all documents that are responsive to the requests made in the Defendants’ First Set of Interrogatories.” (Mot. to Compel at 4.) *2 Separately, Defendants issued a subpoena to the University, and in response the University produced certain documents, including a settlement agreement with Gruenstein. Defendants have represented that the produced settlement agreement does not contain a confidentiality provision. In response, Gruenstein claims that he is also bound by a second settlement agreement with the University, which does in fact contain a confidentiality provision. Gruenstein produced this second settlement agreement to the Court for in camera review. The Court first addresses the relevance of the second settlement agreement and finds that it is relevant to several aspects of Gruenstein's claims. For example, Gruenstein has alleged that Defendants made false statements about him, including that he was “let go from the University of Minnesota due to his unsatisfactory performance.” (Second Am. Compl. ¶ 32, Dkt. No. 28.) Whether Defendants’ statement is in fact true or not is relevant to their defense; put differently, Defendants are entitled to point to the settlement agreement as evidence that the University indeed terminated Gruenstein due to poor performance. Moreover, Defendants have indicated they intend to argue as part of their defense that Gruenstein has a history of making unfounded accusations of defamation and his lawsuit against the University is evidence of that history. The second settlement agreement is relevant to that aspect of the case as well. The Court next addresses the confidentiality provision of the second settlement agreement. As Gruenstein represented, the second settlement agreement requires bound parties to “keep the terms of this Agreement confidential.” But a settlement agreement may be discoverable despite the inclusion of a confidentiality provision. See Channelmark Corp. v. Destination Prods. Int'l, No. 99 C 214, 2000 WL 968818, at *2 (N.D. Ill. July 7, 2000) (“Courts do allow the discovery of information contained in and related to confidential settlement agreements.”); see also Bd. of Trs. of the Leland Stanford Junior Univ. v. Tyco Int'l Ltd., 253 F.R.D. 521, 523 (C.D. Cal. 2008) (collecting cases in which federal courts have ordered disclosure of confidential settlement agreements). And here, the settlement agreement expressly provides that “any party may release the information described herein to the extent compelled to do so by lawful service of process, subpoena, court order, or as otherwise compelled to do so by law, including full and complete disclosure in response thereto.” The settlement agreement merely requires Gruenstein to provide a copy of Defendants’ written discovery requests to the other bound parties prior to production so that they may object or take action as appropriate. Gruenstein has not explained his refusal to follow these procedures, which—in light of the University's prior cooperation with Defendants’ discovery requests—do not appear to pose a significant hurdle. Therefore, the Court finds that Gruenstein's refusal to produce the second settlement agreement is not justified by the confidentiality provision of that agreement.