MACSOUTH FOREST PRODUCTS, LLC, Plaintiff, v. CURRENT BUILDERS, INC., et al., Defendants CASE NO. 0:24-CV-60013-BECERRA/AUGUSTIN-BIRCH United States District Court, S.D. Florida Signed May 30, 2024 Counsel Andrew V. Showen, Hill Rugh Keller & Main, Orlando, FL, for Plaintiff. Jeffrey Scott Geller, Etcheverry & Harrison LLP, Plantation, FL, John A. Moore, Vincent Francis Vaccarella, Walter William Norton III, Vincent F. Vaccarella, P.A., Ft Lauderdale, FL, Matthew Gordon Davis, Matthew Rothrock, Mills Paskert Divers, Tampa, FL, for Defendants. Augustin-Birch, Panayotta, United States Magistrate Judge ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO COMPEL AS TO DEFENDANT TRAVELERS *1 This cause comes before the Court on Plaintiff Mac-south Forest Products Inc.’s Motion to Overrule Objections and Compel Answers to Its March 13, 2024, Request for Production of Documents to Defendant Travelers. DE 64. Defendant Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America filed a response to the Motion, DE 68, Plaintiff filed a reply, DE 69, and this Court held a Discovery Hearing on May 24, 2024. Having carefully considered the briefing, the arguments made by counsel at the Discovery Hearing, and the record and being otherwise fully advised, the Court GRANTS IN PART AND DENIES IN PART Plaintiff's Motion to Compel [DE 64]. I. Background Plaintiff has sued Defendant Current Builders, Inc., among others, for, inter alia, breach of contract and promissory estoppel resulting from its alleged failure to fully pay for lumber and materials that Plaintiff supplied for various construction projects. See DE 65. As relevant to the discovery dispute here, Plaintiff sued Defendant Travelers for breach of contract, alleging Defendant Travelers failed to make interest and attorney's fees payments pursuant to a payment bond. Id. ¶¶ 104–39. For one of the construction projects at issue, Defendant Current Builders, as the principal, executed a payment bond for the payment of labor, materials, and supplies, and Defendant Travelers served as surety for the payment bond. Id. ¶¶ 23, 109. After Defendant Current Builders allegedly failed to pay Plaintiff for lumber and materials supplied, Plaintiff sought payment from Defendant Travelers under the payment bond. Id. ¶¶ 127–32. And although Defendant Travelers eventually paid Plaintiff most of what Plaintiff sought to recover, Defendant Travelers purportedly failed to pay Plaintiff interest and attorney's fees due under the payment bond. Id. ¶¶ 137–38. Therefore, Plaintiff maintains that Defendant Travelers breached that payment bond. As part of the ongoing discovery in this case, Plaintiff served Defendant Travelers with its First Request to Produce, containing 62 Requests for Production, DE 64-1, and Defendant Travelers objected to all but 2 of the Requests for Production. See DE 64-2. As a result, Plaintiff filed the present Motion to Compel, asking the Court to overrule Defendant Travelers’ objections. DE 64. II. Defendant Travelers’ Objections As an initial matter, Plaintiff informed the Court at the May 24, 2024 Discovery Hearing that the other Defendants’ responses to Plaintiff's Requests for Admission served on them have made its Motion to Compel moot as to the following Requests for Production served on Defendant Travelers: 24–29, 32–34, 36–40, 42, and 46–48. Therefore, the Court DENIES WITHOUT PREJUDICE Plaintiff's Motion to Compel as to these Requests for Production. Regarding the remaining Requests for Production at issue, Defendant Travelers raised the same boilerplate objection. See DE 64-2 (objecting to all but 2 Requests for Production on the basis that “Travelers objects to this Request as overly broad and as irrelevant as it relates to the claims and defenses concerning Travelers. Accordingly, Travelers will not produce documents pursuant to this Request.”). Under this Court's Order Setting Discovery Procedures, DE 35, this boilerplate objection is improper in two manners. First, this Court does not permit boilerplate objections. Id. at 4 (“The parties shall not make nonspecific, boilerplate objections.”). Second, insofar as Defendant Travelers raises relevancy and overbreadth objections, this Court's discovery procedures require a party to “include a specific explanation describing why the requested discovery lacks relevance” and to “specifically explain the particular way in which the request is ... overly broad.” Id. at 3–4. Having violated both of these requirements, the Court could overrule Defendant Travelers’ objections on these grounds. *2 Nonetheless, the Court will address the dispute posed by the parties: whether Defendant Travelers must produce documents that are relevant to Plaintiff's claims against the other Defendants but are not relevant to Plaintiff's claims against it. See DE 64 at 2 (explanation from Plaintiff that it believes Defendant Travelers has documents concerning the other Defendants’ financial condition which are relevant to Plaintiff's claims against those Defendants); DE 68 at 3 (argument from Defendant Travelers that Plaintiff's Requests for Production are irrelevant to the claims against it and that Plaintiff can more conveniently receive the requested documents from the other Defendants). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1) permits discovery of “any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.” Based on Rule 26(b)(1)’s framing of relevance as concerning “any party's claim or defense,” courts have construed the scope of discovery to permit discovery from one party that is only relevant to claims or defenses concerning a different party. See S. Yuba River Citizens League v. Nat'l Marine Fisheries Serv., No. CV S-06-2845 LKK/JFM, 2008 WL 11400759, at *12 (E.D. Cal. Dec. 23, 2008) (“[Rule 26(b)] has been interpreted to mean that a party must respond to discovery requests seeking information that is only relevant to claims regarding other parties.”); In re TelexFree Sec. Litig., No. CV 4:14-02566-TSH, 2023 WL 5726378, at *1 (D. Mass. Sept. 5, 2023) (“Especially in complex, multi-party cases like this one, it is conceivable one defendant may have information relevant to a plaintiff's claim against a different defendant. That information is relevant under Rule 26 and subject to discovery.” (citation omitted)); cf. 8 C. Wright, A. Miller, & R. Marcus, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2011 (3d ed. 2008) (“A third-party defendant may examine plaintiff although neither party asserts a claim against the other.”). In other words, discovery is relevant if it relates to any party's claim or defense, regardless of whether the discovery is relevant to the claims or defenses raised between the requesting party and the responding party. See Milinazzo v. State Farm Ins. Co., 247 F.R.D. 691, 695–96 (S.D. Fla. 2007) (“Discovery should ordinarily be allowed unless it is clear that the information sought has no possible bearing on the claims and defenses of the parties or otherwise on the subject matter of the action.”). Thus, the fact that Plaintiff seeks information from Defendant Travelers that is only relevant to Plaintiff's claims against the other Defendants does not make Plaintiff's Requests for Production irrelevant or overly broad. Accordingly, Defendant Travelers’ relevancy and overbreadth objections are overruled. Furthermore, during the May 24 Discovery Hearing, Defendant Travelers raised additional objections not stated in its response to Plaintiff's First Request to Produce. Having raised these objections for the first time at the Discovery Hearing, the objections were untimely and thus have been waived. See S.D. Fla. L.R. 26.1(e)(2)(A) (“Any ground not stated in an objection within the time provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or any extensions thereof, shall be waived.”). A court may excuse the untimeliness of objections and deem them not waived upon a showing of good cause. Kennedy v. Batmasian, No. 15–81353–CIV, 2016 WL 824571, at *2 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 26, 2016) (“Failure to timely object to discovery requests waives a party's objections to the requests unless good cause has been shown.”). However, Defendant Travelers did not provide good cause for raising objections for the first time during the May 24 Discovery Hearing. Consequently, the Court finds that any objections raised by Defendant Travelers for the first time during the May 24 Discovery Hearing have been waived. III. Limitations on Defendant Travelers’ Required Production *3 The Court finds that Defendant Travelers’ concerns—that Plaintiff can more conveniently receive the requested documents from the other Defendants—are better addressed through Rule 26(b)(2)(C)(i) than through relevancy and overbreadth objections. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(i) (“On motion or its own, the court must limit the frequency or extent of discovery otherwise allowed by these rules or by local rule if it determines that: (i) the discovery sought is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or can be obtained from some other source that is more convenient, less burdensome, or less expensive[.]”). Defendant Travelers cites this Rule in its response to Plaintiff's Motion to Compel, DE 68 at 3–4, but Defendant Travelers has neither filed a motion under this Rule nor included this Rule in its objections to Plaintiff's Requests for Production. Nonetheless, Rule 26(b)(2)(C)(i) permits a court to limit the extent of discovery on its own, and the Court, on its own, will limit the extent of discovery Defendant Travelers is required to produce in response to Plaintiff's Requests for Production. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34, the responding party must produce items in its “possession, custody, or control” in response to a request for production. Control, as used in Rule 34, “is defined not only as possession, but as the legal right to obtain the documents requested upon demand.” Searock v. Stripling, 736 F.2d 650, 653 (11th Cir. 1984). Therefore, after having its objections overruled, Defendant Travelers would, without any limitation, be required to produce documents in response to Plaintiff's Requests for Production where it has the legal right to obtain those documents from the other Defendants. But because the Court finds that Plaintiff can more conveniently obtain those documents from the other Defendants, rather than using Defendant Travelers as a middleman, the Court will employ Rule 26(b)(2)(C)(i) to limit what Defendant Travelers is required to produce. Instead of producing all documents within its “possession, custody, or control,” Defendant Travelers need only produce documents within its possession or custody, and Defendant Travelers need not request any documents from the other Defendants in order to respond to Plaintiff's Requests for Production.[1] Lastly, at the May 24 Discovery Hearing, Plaintiff indicated a willingness to agree to a confidentiality or protective order governing the documents produced in response to its Requests for Production, and the parties are free to present the Court with a stipulated confidentiality or protective order. IV. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff's Motion to Compel [DE 64] is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART. Defendant Travelers shall respond to Plaintiff's First Request to Produce, as explained herein, within 14 days of this Order. DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, this 30th day of May, 2024. Footnotes [1] The Court notes that Plaintiff stated during the May 24 Discovery Hearing that it was only seeking documents that Defendant Travelers currently has, not documents Defendant Travelers would need to obtain from the other Defendants.