THOMAS B. SMITH, Magistrate Judge.
This Fair Labor Standards Act case is before the Court on Defendant Orange Lake Country Club Realty, Inc.'s Motion to Compel Production of Documents (Doc. 36). Plaintiffs are former sales representatives who sold vacation ownership opportunities for Defendant (
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b) provides for "discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense. . . ." "The Courts have long held that relevance for discovery purposes is much broader than relevance for trial purposes."
Requests for discovery must be tailored so that they "appear[] reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." FED.R.CIV.P. 26(b)(1). "Otherwise, the Defendant would be allowed to engage in the proverbial fishing expedition, in the hope that there might be something of relevance in Plaintiff's [social media] account."
Rule 26 also requires that discovery be proportional to the needs of the case. When a person signs a discovery request she/he is certifying "that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief formed after reasonable inquiry" the discovery request is "neither unreasonable nor unduly burdensome or expensive, considering the needs of the case, prior discovery in the case, the amount in controversy, and the importance of the issues at stake in the litigation." FED.R.CIV.P. 26(g)(1)(B)(iii).
This dispute concerns information on social networking sites. "Generally, [social networking site] content is neither privileged nor protected by any right of privacy."
Defendant is asking the Court to overrule Artt's objections and compel production of the information sought in the following requests:
Defendant does not seek this information to establish that Artt was engaging in non-work related activities while on the job, or to prove a violation of a workplace policy (Doc. 36 at 7). Instead, Defendant argues that the information is relevant and critical because Artt claims to have worked an average of 15 to 20 hours of overtime per week off-the-clock, but she does not have documents to establish the exact number of hours she is claiming
Defendant's representation that Artt claims to have worked an average of 15 to 20 hours per week off-the-clock does not appear to be true. Artt represents that months before the motion to compel was filed, she produced her overtime calculations (Doc. 38 at 8). Those calculations show that Artt is only seeking overtime for days on which she clocked in and out during a workday (
The parties have not informed the Court of the extent to which Artt uses social media, or the extent to which other discovery has addressed the information sought in Defendant's requests. Still, given the nature of the case, the Court finds that Defendant's request for every online profile, post, message, tweet, reply, retweet, status update, wall comment, group joined, activity stream, blog entry, photograph, video, online communication, and all other information contained in Artt's Facebook, MySpace, Instagram, LinkedIn or other social networking accounts that she posted at any time between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm on any date between June 19, 2011 and her last day of employment with Defendant is on its face, overbroad, unduly burdensome, and unreasonable.
For these reasons, Defendant's motion is