Citing “Diminishing Returns,” Court Declines to Compel Additional Discovery
Armstrong Pump, Inc. v. Hartman, No. 10-CV-446S, 2016 WL 7208753 (W.D.N.Y. Dec. 13, 2016)
“Implicit in both the language and the spirit of the 2015 Amendments is the obligation, at any stage of a case, to prevent parties from expending increasing time and energy pursuing diminishing returns.”
In this case, despite having viewed all of the at-issue documents and printing “approximately half of the total pages” (albeit under strict protocols), Plaintiff sought to compel “formal production” of all of the documents pursuant to the parties’ protective order, arguing that the documents did not contain “actual programming.” Defendant argued that the documents were “functionally equivalent to source code” and should not be subject to production. Ultimately, the Court reasoned that discovery had “reached the point of diminishing returns” and declined to compel production, with limited exceptions.