[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
_____________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
September 22, 2003
No. 03-10440 THOMAS K. KAHN
_____________________________ CLERK
D. C. Docket No. 01-01759 CV-S
IN RE:
FORD MOTOR COMPANY,
Petitioner.
_________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
__________________
(September 22, 2003)
Before EDMONDSON, Chief Judge, CARNES, Circuit Judge, and CARNES *,
District Judge.
EDMONDSON, Chief Judge:
*
Honorable Julie E. Carnes, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia,
sitting by designation.
Appellant Ford Motor Company seeks a writ of mandamus or prohibition
directing Chief Judge Clemon of the Northern District of Alabama to vacate a
discovery order. The order required Ford to allow Plaintiff Elizabeth Russell
access to Ford’s Master Owner Relations Systems I, II, and III (“MORS”) and
Common Quality Indicator System (“CQIS”) databases.
Russell filed suit against Ford. The suit alleges that the seatbelt buckle of
Russell’s Ford vehicle was defectively designed because the buckle “inertially
unlatched” during an accident, causing her injury. After filing several document
requests, Russell filed a motion to compel seeking direct access to Ford’s MORS
and CQIS databases to conduct searches for claims related to inertial unlatching of
the RCF-67 seatbelt buckle. MORS records all customer contacts with Ford, and
CQIS records contacts by dealers, personnel, and other sources.
In fewer than fourteen days of the filing of the motion to compel, the district
court, without a hearing and before Ford had responded, granted Russell’s motion
to compel. Then, Ford filed a motion for reconsideration; and the parties
submitted briefs and evidence. After a hearing, the district court ordered Ford to
allow Russell direct access to the MORS and CQIS databases. Ford filed this
petition for a writ of mandamus or prohibition.
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Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy available only to correct a clear
abuse of discretion or a usurpation of judicial power. In re Lopez-Lukis, 113 F.3d
1187, 1187 (11th Cir. 1997); In re Fink, 876 F.2d 84, 84 (11th Cir. 1989).1 “In the
context of discovery orders which will compromise a claim of privilege or
invasion of privacy rights, mandamus has been found appropriate due to the
importance of the privilege, the seriousness of the injury if discovery is obtained,
and the difficulty of obtaining effective review once the privileged information has
been made public.” In re Fink, 876 F.2d at 84. We review a district court’s
discovery orders for a clear abuse of discretion. Id.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), parties “may obtain
discovery regarding any matter, not privileged, that is relevant to the claim or
defense of any party.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Although the parties agree that
the information that Russell seeks is discoverable, they disagree on the need for
direct access to Ford’s computer databases.
Under Rule 34(a), parties may request the other party to “produce and
permit the party making the request . . . to inspect and copy, any designated
documents (including writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs,
1
Chief Judge Clemon was invited to respond to the petition for mandamus. No response was filed
by Chief Judge Clemon.
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phonorecords, and other data compilations from which information can be
obtained, translated, if necessary, by the respondent through detection devices into
reasonably usable form).” Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(a). But Rule 34(a) does not grant
unrestricted, direct access to a respondent’s database compilations. Instead, Rule
34(a) allows a requesting party to inspect and to copy the product -- whether it be
a document, disk, or other device -- resulting from the respondent’s translation of
the data into a reasonably usable form.
The Advisory Committee Notes to Rule 34(a) support this interpretation.
Commenting on data compilations, the Committee stated, “[W]hen the data can as
a practical matter be made usable by the discovering party only through
respondent’s devices, respondent may be required to use his devices to translate
the data into usable form. In many instances, this means that respondent will have
to supply a print-out of computer data.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(a) advisory
committee’s note (1970 amend.). Like the other discovery rules, Rule 34(a)
allows the responding party to search his records to produce the required, relevant
data. Rule 34(a) does not give the requesting party the right to conduct the actual
search. While at times -- perhaps due to improper conduct on the part of the
responding party -- the requesting party itself may need to check the data
compilation, the district court must “protect respondent with respect to
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preservation of his records, confidentiality of nondiscoverable matters, and costs.”
Id.
In this case, Ford and Russell dispute whether Ford properly responded to
Russell’s earlier requests for production. Although Russell asserts that Ford has
not been forthright in providing documents, Ford contends that it has produced all
relevant information. The district court was in the best position to determine
whether Ford had improperly dealt with the earlier discovery requests. But the
district court made no findings -- express or implied -- that Ford had failed to
comply properly with discovery requests.
The district court also did not discuss its view of Ford’s objections and
provided no substantive explanation for the court’s ruling. Ford objected to the
search on the grounds that (1) Russell had established no discovery abuses by
Ford, (2) Ford had already searched the database and produced all relevant, non-
privileged materials, and (3) the discovery rules did not allow the court to grant
Russell free access to the databases regardless of relevance, privilege, or
confidentiality. When a party objects to a motion for discovery, a court should
rule on the objections and ordinarily give at least some statement of its reasons.
“While [a court] has discretion to grant or deny the motion, it should not grant the
motion in the face of well-developed, bona fide objections without a meaningful
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explanation of its decision.” Chudasama v. Mazda Motor Corp., 123 F.3d 1353,
1370 (11th Cir. 1997).
Furthermore, in its order, the district court granted Russell unlimited, direct
access to Ford’s databases. The district court established no protocols for the
search. The court did not even designate search terms to restrict the search.
Without constraints, the order grants Russell access to information that would not
-- and should not -- otherwise be discoverable without Ford first having had an
opportunity to object.
While some kind of direct access might be permissible in certain cases, this
case has not been shown to be one of those cases. Russell is unentitled to this kind
of discovery without -- at the outset -- a factual finding of some non-compliance
with discovery rules by Ford. By granting the sweeping order in this case,
especially without such a finding, the district court clearly abused its discretion.
Accordingly, the petition for a writ of mandamus is GRANTED. The
pertinent discovery order of 12 December 2002 must be VACATED.
Petition is GRANTED.
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