RENEAU C. KENNEDY, Ed.D, Plaintiff, v. VEE LEE aka VOEUTH LAY, et al., Defendants Civil No. 20-00563 DKW-KJM United States District Court, D. Hawai‘i Filed April 29, 2022 Counsel Michael L. Lam, Case Lombardi & Pettit, Honolulu, HI, Michael Lorusso, Law Offices of Leslie R. Kop, Honolulu, HI, David Geoffrey Brittin, Harrison K. Goo, James William Rooney, Travis Takeshi Moon, Case Lombardi & Pettit, Honolulu, HI, for Plaintiff. Vee Lee, Indianapolis, IN, Pro Se. Mansfield, Kenneth J., United States Magistrate Judge ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF/COUNTERCLAIMANT RENEAU C. KENNEDY, Ed.D'S MOTION TO COMPEL *1 On March 23, 2022, Plaintiff/Counterclaim Defendant Reneau C. Kennedy, Ed.D (“Plaintiff”) filed a Motion to Compel (“Motion”). ECF No. 58. Defendant/Counterclaimant Vee Lee, aka Voeuth Lay (“Defendant”) did not file an opposition or otherwise respond to the Motion. The parties satisfied their meet-and-confer obligation. The Court held a hearing on the Motion on April 28, 2022. David Geoffrey Brittin, Esq., James Rooney, Esq., and Michael Lorusso, Esq., appeared on behalf of Plaintiff. Defendant did not appear. After carefully considering the memoranda, arguments, and record in this case, the Court DENIES the Motion for the reasons set forth below. BACKGROUND On December 21, 2020, Plaintiff filed her Complaint. ECF No. 1. On January 28, 2021, Defendant filed her Answer and Counterclaim to the Complaint. ECF No. 12. The next day, January 29, 2021, Defendant filed her First Amended Answer and Counterclaim. ECF No. 14. The Court takes the following allegations from Plaintiff's Complaint and Defendant's First Amended Answer and Counterclaim. This case arises out of a child custody proceeding between Defendant and Defendant's ex-husband, Scott Alan Jones (“Mr. Jones”), in the Family Court of the First Circuit, State of Hawaii (“Family Court”), Vee Lee v. Scott Alan Jones, FC-D No. 19-1-0041 (“Custody Proceeding”). Plaintiff served as a court-appointed custody evaluator in the Custody Proceeding. In doing so, Plaintiff prepared a custody evaluation report, dated August 22, 2019 (“08/22/2019 Report”), and testified at the one-day trial on September 10, 2019 regarding temporary custody. On September 23, 2019, the Family Court issued an order awarding temporary sole legal and physical custody of Defendant's and Mr. Jones’ three children to Mr. Jones in Indiana. Plaintiff alleges that, in October 2020, Defendant “began a deliberate, malicious and targeted campaign of online attacks, harassment, and retaliation” against Plaintiff. ECF No. 1 at 5 ¶ 25. Plaintiff also alleges that Defendant posted false and defamatory statements about Plaintiff on various social media platforms. Plaintiff thus filed the Complaint against Defendant. The Complaint asserts the following claims against Defendant: (1) Count I—Violation of Cyberpiracy Protections for Individuals, 15 U.S.C. § 8131; (2) Count II—Violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125; (3) Count III—Federal Trademark Infringement; (4) Count IV—Federal Unfair Competition; (5) Count V—State Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices; (6) Count VI—Common Law Trademark Infringement and Unfair Competition; (7) Count VII—False Light; (8) Count VIII—Defamation; and (9) Count IX—Punitive Damages. On July 8, 2021, Plaintiff served two discovery requests on Defendant, a First Request for Production of Documents (“RPOD”) and a First Request for Answers to Interrogatories (“RAI”). See ECF No. 58-1 at 2. On September 3, 2021, Defendant submitted to Plaintiff her written responses to the RPOD and RAI. Id. at 4. On March 3, 2022, Plaintiff's counsel met and conferred with Defendant regarding Defendant's responses to the RPOD (“RPOD Response”) and RAI (“RAI Response”), asserting that Defendant's responses are deficient. Id. at 6. Plaintiff subsequently filed the instant Motion. LEGAL STANDARD *2 Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure defines the scope of permissible discovery as follows: Parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the party's access to relevant information, the party's resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden and expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Thus, to be discoverable, information must first be “relevant to any party's claim or defense.” Id. A matter is relevant if it “reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on[ ] any issue that may be in the case.” Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 351 (1978) (brackets added, citation omitted). District courts have broad discretion to determine relevancy for the purpose of granting or denying discovery. See Hallett v. Morgan, 296 F.3d 732, 751 (9th Cir. 2002) (establishing standard of review of trial court's decision to deny or permit discovery). Rule 37 enables the propounding party to bring a motion to compel responses to discovery requests. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(3)(B). On a motion to compel discovery, the burden is on the moving party to demonstrate the following to the court: “ ‘(1) which discovery requests are the subject of his motion to compel, (2) which of the defendants’ responses are disputed, (3) why the responses are deficient, (4) the reasons defendants’ objections are without merit, and (5) the relevance of the requested information to the prosecution of his action.’ ” Kim v. Crocs, Inc., CIVIL NO. 16-00460 JMS KJM, 2017 WL 10379587, at *3 (D. Haw. Nov. 28, 2017) (quoting Hupp v. San Diego Cnty., Civil No. 12cv0492 GPC (RBB), 2014 WL 1404510, at *2 (S.D. Cal. Apr. 10, 2014)). The trial court's “decision to deny discovery will not be disturbed except upon the clearest showing that denial of discovery results in actual and substantial prejudice to the complaining litigant.” Branch v. Umphenour, 936 F.3d 994, 1005 (9th Cir. 2019) (quoting Hallett, 296 F.3d at 751). DISCUSSION I. RPOD The RPOD includes the following requests for documents: 10. Any and all Documents and/or Communications that refer or relate to any Website that is owned, controlled and/or accessible by You. 11. Any and all Documents and/or Communications that refer or relate to any Online Platform that is owned, controlled and/or accessible by You. 12. Any and all Documents and/or Communications that refer or relate to any Social Media and/or account that is owned, controlled and/or accessible by You. ECF No. 58-3 at 18. The RPOD provides the following pertinent definitions: 8. The term “Online Platform” means and includes any and all digital services that facilitate interactions between two or more distinct but interdependent set of users. 9. The term “Social Media” means and includes any form of electronic communications through which users create online communities to share information, idea, personal message and other content. *3 .... 11. The term “Website” means and includes a group of world wide web pages usually containing hyperlinks to each other and made available online by an individual, company, educational institution, government or organization. Id. at 8. Defendant's RPOD Response asserts the same objections in response to RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12: “Defendant VEE LEE objects to the Request to the extent that it is vague and ambiguous, overly broad, uncertain and/or unintelligible such that Defendant cannot, after diligent inquiry and analysis, accurately determine appropriate answers.” ECF No. 58-8 at 5–6. The Court notes that, while Defendant asserts this response for RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12, Defendant did not assert this response for all requests in the RPOD. Plaintiff contends that RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12 request “documents and information pertaining to the domain names, websites or social media profiles created by Defendant, which go to the crux of [Plaintiff's] claims and is of the highest importance to resolve the issues.” ECF No. 58-1 at 8. Plaintiff contends that these RPOD requests are particularly important to establishing Counts I, III, IV, VII, and VIII of the Complaint and, thus, permissible, relevant discovery under Rule 26(b)(1). Id. The Court finds that RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12 are, as Defendant asserts in her specific objections thereto, overly broad. Plaintiff requests that Defendant produce “any and all Documents and/or Communications that refer or relate to any” Website, Online Platform, and Social Media account that is “owned, controlled and/or accessible” by Defendant. These requests—as drafted—fail to limit or otherwise tailor these requests to the claims or issues in this case. The Court thus sustains Defendant's objections to RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12 as overly broad and denies the Motion as to these requests. II. RAI Interrogatory No. 4 in the RAI states: State and identify with particularity, any Website which you either created, control, or have the login information to. For each such Website, please state: a. The domain name; b. The username and password; and c. The last time You accessed the Website. ECF No. 58-4 at 16. The term “Website” has the same definition as in the RPOD. See id. at 8. Defendant provided the following response to Interrogatory No. 4: The website I currently have access to is VeeVee.com and DogGoneFood.com Username is Vee@veeve.com Last time I accessed VeeVee.com was January of 2020 Last time I accessed DogGoneFood.come was July 2021 Everything you can see on the website is public. Defendant is more than willing to download the information from each of the relevant websites accounts and provide Plaintiff with copies. Defendant does not want to disclose passwords to websites accounts to prevent “fishing expeditions” by Plaintiff as well as the website have no relevance. Defendant VEE LEE objects to the Request to the extent that it is overbroad, unreasonably burdensome, oppressive, cause embarrassment or vexatious, in that the information so acquired would be of little or no relevance to the issues in this case, and/or would place an unreasonable and oppressive burden on Defendant in the expenditure of time and money. *4 ECF No. 58-7 at 5. Plaintiff contends that Defendant has previously admitted—in her First Amended Answer and Counterclaim—that Defendant has also registered websites with the following domain names: reneaukennedy.com; drreneaukennedy.com; and portlockpredator.com. See ECF No. 58-1 at 5–6. Defendant did not, however, include any information regarding these three websites in her response to Interrogatory No. 4. The Court finds, as Defendant asserts in her RAI Response, that Interrogatory No. 4 is overly broad. Like, RPOD requests 10, 11, and 12, Interrogatory No. 4 is not limited or otherwise tailored to the claims or issues in this case inasmuch as it requests information regarding any website to which Defendant has login information. In addition, the Court finds that Plaintiff fails to establish that Defendant's website passwords are discoverable. The Court thus sustains Defendant's objection to Interrogatory No. 4 as overbroad and denies the Motion as to this request. CONCLUSION Based upon the foregoing, the Court DENIES Plaintiff/Counterclaim Defendant Reneau C. Kennedy, Ed.D's Motion to Compel (ECF No. 58). IT IS SO ORDERED. DATED: Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29, 2022.