## Facts

- Multiple consumer actions were centralized in an MDL in the District of Connecticut after a public announcement that benzene had been identified in Perrier bottled water.
- Plaintiffs asserted federal and state-law claims, including RICO and warranty theories, and served broad interrogatories and document requests on defendants.
- One defendant, Source Perrier, S.A., was a French corporation; key documents and witnesses were located in France.
- Plaintiffs sought to compel further interrogatory answers and document production, alleging inadequate responses.
- Source Perrier moved for a protective order requiring that discovery directed to it and materials in France proceed under the Hague Evidence Convention rather than the Federal Rules.
- A local rule limited parties to 30 interrogatories (including subparts) absent leave of court; the court had previously enforced that limit by order.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs could compel additional responses to interrogatories exceeding the local-rule limit and a prior court order.
2. Whether domestic defendants could be compelled to produce documents allegedly within a co-defendant’s “control” when that co-defendant was itself a party.
3. What temporal start date for discovery was reasonably tied to plaintiffs’ alleged pattern of conduct.
4. Whether defendants’ privilege objections were adequately supported.
5. Whether discovery from a French party and for materials located in France had to proceed under the Hague Evidence Convention rather than under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

## Decision

- The court denied efforts to compel additional answers to interrogatories that exceeded the numerical limit imposed by local rule and prior order.
- The court refused to require defendants to produce documents that were under the control of a co-defendant where that co-defendant was a party from whom discovery could be sought directly.
- The court set the permissible discovery period to begin January 1, 1985.
- The court overruled defendants’ privilege assertions due to insufficient substantiation.
- The court granted Source Perrier’s protective order to the extent it required discovery from Source Perrier and materials located in France to proceed pursuant to the Hague Evidence Convention.
- Overall, the motion to compel was granted in part and denied in part, and the protective order was granted in part.

## Legal Principles

- Courts may strictly enforce local interrogatory limits and decline to compel responses to discovery served in violation of those limits or prior court orders.
- Under Rule 34, a party generally is not required to produce documents solely because they are accessible through a co-defendant, particularly when the entity with possession or control is a party subject to discovery.
- Temporal limits on discovery should be tied to the pleaded theory of misconduct and set to balance relevance against overbreadth.
- Privilege objections must be supported with enough information to permit assessment of the claim; conclusory assertions may be overruled.
- In transnational discovery, a court may require use of the Hague Evidence Convention for discovery directed to a foreign party and evidence located abroad when comity and the foreign state’s interests favor Convention procedures.

## Conclusion

The court managed MDL discovery by enforcing interrogatory limits, defining a reasonable time frame, rejecting unsupported privilege claims, declining to shift production burdens among co-defendants, and requiring that discovery from the French defendant and France-based materials proceed through the Hague Evidence Convention.


In re Perrier Bottled Water Litig., 138 F.R.D. 348 (D. Conn. 1991)