## Facts

- A minor plaintiff, through his mother, brought a products-liability action alleging severe burns when children’s pajamas manufactured and marketed by Sears ignited (incident in 1970; suit filed in 1975).
- Plaintiff sought production of Sears’s records of complaints and communications about injuries or deaths from burning children’s sleepwear sold by Sears.
- Sears moved to quash, asserting the request was unduly burdensome because its filing system made it difficult and expensive to locate responsive materials.
- A magistrate ordered Sears to produce the requested records within thirty days; Sears did not comply.
- After a hearing, the district court found Sears’s noncompliance willful and entered a default judgment against Sears on liability under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b)(2)(C).
- Sears moved to set aside the default, arguing compliance was effectively impossible given its recordkeeping practices.

## Issues

1. Whether Sears could avoid compliance with the discovery order by arguing that its filing system made production unduly burdensome or practically impossible.
2. Whether the Rule 37(b)(2)(C) default on liability should be set aside based on Sears’s asserted difficulties in locating the requested records.

## Decision

- The court denied Sears’s motion to set aside the default judgment.
- The court held that relevant discovery about similar accidents could not be blocked by claims that production was costly or time-consuming.
- The court concluded Sears could not rely on its own inadequate recordkeeping system to excuse failure to comply with a discovery order.
- The court left in place the default on liability, with further proceedings to address damages.

## Legal Principles

- The resisting party bears the burden of showing why requested discovery should not be permitted.
- Information about similar accidents is discoverable when it bears on product danger and the defendant’s knowledge or notice.
- General claims that production would be costly or time-consuming, without more, do not justify nonproduction of relevant materials.
- A producing party’s difficulty locating records—especially when attributable to its own filing system—does not excuse failure to produce.
- Willful and deliberate violation of a discovery order can justify the severe sanction of default under Rule 37(b)(2)(C), particularly where the requested materials are solely within the resisting party’s control.

## Conclusion

The court enforced discovery obligations by refusing to set aside a Rule 37 default on liability, holding that a party cannot evade production of relevant, exclusively controlled records by citing burdens created by its own recordkeeping system.


Kozlowski v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 73 F.R.D. 73 (D. Mass. 1976)