JUAN CASTILLO, Plaintiff, v. JLG INDUSTRIES, INC., OSHKOSH CORPORATION, and JORGE ESTRADA, Defendant CIVIL ACTION NO. 5:18-CV-41 United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Laredo Division Filed August 01, 2019 Counsel Ronald Rodriguez, The Law Offices of Ronald Rodriguez PC, Laredo, TX, for Plaintiff. Giorgio George Caflisch, Kyle M. Rowley, Sheehy, Ware & Pappas, P.C., Houston, TX, Jamie Renee Guidry, Kelly Morgan et al., Odessa, TX, for Defendants. Kazen, John A., United States Magistrate Judge ORDER *1 Pending before the Court is Defendants' Opposed Motion for Protection Regarding Plaintiff's Notice of Defendants' Corporate Representative Depositions (Dkt. No. 75).[1] Defendants move to quash the notices of depositions of Defendants' corporate representatives, scheduled to be held on August 1, 2019 in Laredo, Texas, at the office of Plaintiff's counsel. Defendants move for quashing on grounds of the notices' untimeliness, topics, and accompanying subpoenas duces tecum. On July 31, 2019, the Court held a hearing on Defendants' motion. For the reasons stated by the Court at the hearing and as discussed below, Defendants' motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. I. Discussion 1. Whether the Depositions Should Be Quashed in their Entirety On July 23, 2019, Plaintiff issued notices of depositions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) for the oral depositions of Defendants' corporate representatives. (See Dkt. Nos. 72 & 73). Defendants now contend that due to the notices' putative untimeliness Defendants' and their representatives should be entitled to protection from the noticed depositions. (Dkt. No. 75). For the reasons discussed at the hearing, the Court will not quash the contested notices (Dkt. Nos. 72 & 73). However, Defendant is relieved from the obligation to produce its representatives by the date noticed—August 1, 2019—but shall produce them for deposition no later than August 30, 2019. This arrangement, discussed at the hearing, is by agreement of the parties. The Court therefore ORDERS the parties to reserve August 14, 27, 28, 29, and 30 to conduct the depositions; however, if another date becomes available, the depositions may proceed by agreement of the parties any day before August 30, 2019. Because the parties' proposed deposition dates fall outside the Court's current discovery deadline (Dkt. No. 67 at 7), it is further ORDERED that the deadline to complete discovery is extended to August 30, 2019 for the limited purpose of conducting the depositions of persons already noticed in this lawsuit prior to the date of this Order.[2] No other discovery is allowed. 2. Deposition Topics *2 Plaintiffs' notices identify five matters for examination on which Defendants' representatives may be deposed. (Dkt. Nos. 72 & 73). Defendants contend that the topics do not conform with the Rule 30(b)(6) “reasonable particularity” requirement. (Dkt. No. 75 at 4). At the hearing on the motion, the Court confirmed that of the five topics identified in Plaintiffs' notices, only three required a ruling by the Court. The other two—topics 3 and 4—have been withdrawn by agreement between the parties. As to the other three, the Court ORDERS as follows: Topic 1: Plaintiff may inquire into the training provided to individuals on the safe moving of scissor lifts at the Laredo warehouse. Plaintiff may inquire about training on the subject for the time period beginning three years before the accident underlying the lawsuit through the present. Topic 2: Plaintiff may inquire into the legal relationship between JLG Industries, Inc. and Oshkosh Corporation. Defendants' counsel represented to the Court that he will produce to Plaintiff's counsel a copy of a document showing the legal relationship between Defendants. Plaintiff's counsel stated that after reviewing the document provided by Defendants he would decide whether to inquire into this matter. Topic 5: The Court will take this matter under advisement until after it has performed an in camera review of Jorge Estrada's personnel file. 3. Subpoenas Duces Tecum Finally, Defendants seek protection from Plaintiff's subpoenas duces tecum, which Defendants contend should be quashed as untimely under the Court's scheduling order or, in the alternative, because they include items for which the Court has already denied discovery. (Dkt. No. 75 at 6). The Court agrees that the discovery request is untimely. In the Order for Conference (Dkt. No. 15), the parties were admonished that discovery requests must be served early enough to give the responding party sufficient time to serve a response before the expiration of the discovery deadline; discovery requests may not, without leave of court, be made less than thirty days before the court-ordered deadline. These limitations were stated unambiguously in the Order for Conference: Discovery Deadline: The term “completed” as used in the discovery deadline identified in the Court's Scheduling Order means that parties must serve their written discovery requests in sufficient time for the responding party to serve its responses before this deadline. A party may not serve discovery requests within the 30-day period before this deadline unless they seek leave of Court to serve a belated request and show good cause for the same. In such event, the proposed belated discovery request shall be filed with the motion, and the opposing party will receive it with service of the motion but need not respond to the same until such time as the Court grants the motion. (Dkt. No. 15 at 3). The parties were reminded of these limitations in the Court's first scheduling order. (Dkt. No. 23 at 2 n.2). Thus, under the Court's deadlines, Plaintiffs' subpoenas duces tecum to Defendants are untimely and those portions of the deposition notices (Dkt. Nos. 72 & 73) are QUASHED. II. Conclusion Accordingly, Defendants' Opposed Motion for Protection Regarding Plaintiff's Notice of Defendants' Corporate Representative Depositions (Dkt. No. 75) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. IT IS SO ORDERED. SIGNED on August 1, 2019. Footnotes [1] Defendants' motion contains a local-rules certificate of conference that describes how and when Defendants attempted to confer in good faith to resolve the issues underlying the motion. (Dtk. No. 75 at 9–10). Defendants' efforts comprised a telephonic conference on July 26, 2019 and an “email correspondence dated July 23 and 24.” Id. The latter correspondence, attached to the motion as Exhibit 1, shows an email from Plaintiff's counsel sent on July 22, 2019 at 4:34 p.m. and a response from Defense counsel sent the next day at 2:37 p.m. (Dkt. No. 75-1). An hour after Defense counsel sent that email, Plaintiff filed his Motion for Protection (Dkt. No. 70). That motion contained the following averment: “Plaintiff's counsel conferred with defense counsel on the matters contained in this motion.... No response was received.” (Dkt. No. 70 at 1–2). Attached to the motion is Plaintiff's July 22nd email; Defendant's response, received an hour before the motion was filed, is omitted and ignored. Plaintiff's counsel is warned that further misrepresentations of this kind could result in sanctions. [2] The following is the list of persons whose depositions have been noticed: Jorge Garcia, Jorge Estrada, Plaintiff Juan Castillo, Ovidio Gutierrez, Cesar Canales, and the designated representatives of both Defendants.