District Court (Mo.) Limits TCPA Blast-Fax Discovery to Faxes at Issue, Not to All Faxes Possibly Sent During 4-year Period

In St. Louis Heart Center, Inc. v. Nomax, Inc., 2015 WL 9451046, at *2 (E.D.Mo., 2015), Judge White refused to strike a TCPA blast-fax class action definition as being overlord, but then limited the Plaintiff’s discovery solely to the faxes sent — not to all faxes possibly sent during the 4-year SofL period.

Plaintiff served a subpoena on Windstream Communications, LLC (“Windstream”) seeking all outgoing call detail records (CDRs) from Defendants’ two fax lines for the period of February 6, 2011 to the present.  Defendant seeks to quash this subpoena as overbroad and unduly burdensome for several reasons. Defendant because (i) Defendant sent other faxes besides fax advertisements over the two fax lines and CDRs would not indicate the image sent, making the subpoena overly broad and unduly burdensome; (ii) the subpoena requests confidential and proprietary information; (iii) the subpoena is not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence; and (iv) Defendant has already produced records relating to the facsimile numbers to which the six fax advertisements attached to the Second Amended Complaint were sent and, therefore, the information sought in the subpoena is redundant and unnecessary. (ECF No. 48).  In response, Plaintiff argues that it should be allowed to conduct discovery regarding all fax advertisements sent during the class period, not just the six attached to the Second Amended Complaint as Exhibits A-F. (ECF No. 55 at 8-11 (citing Whiteamire Clinic, P.A., Inc. v. Quill Corp:., No. 12 C 5490, 2013 WL 5348377, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 24, 2013) (“Quill may not deprive plaintiff of discovery related to the class while Quill continues to oppose class certification”). Further, Plaintiff argues that Defendant has not satisfied its burden of demonstrating undue hardship to Windstream in responding to the subpoena. (ECF No. 55 at 12-13). Finally, Plaintiff notes that there is a protective order in place to sure the confidentially of Defendant’s information. (ECF No. 55 at 13-14).  The Court holds that Plaintiffs requested discovery is overbroad and unduly burdensome. The Court finds that the proposed subpoena is overbroad in that it seeks the CDRs for all facsimiles (not just facsimile advertisements) sent by Defendants over a four year period. (ECF No. 57 at 2). Plaintiff cites to no cases that support such a broad subpoena. Further, the Court holds that the subpoena is overbroad because it seeks facsimile records that are irrelevant to this case. The Court believes that Plaintiffs subpoena would seek facsimile information that might be relevant to other lawsuits, but not this case. The Court limits the subpoena to production of the CDRs for the facsimiles that are attached to the Second Amended Complaint as Exhibits A-F.