## Facts

- Major Tours, Inc. and other African-American–owned commercial bus companies alleged racially discriminatory targeting within New Jersey’s commercial bus safety inspection and enforcement program.
- Plaintiffs claimed state inspectors disproportionately stopped and inspected their buses, fabricated or exaggerated violations, and ordered unjustified out-of-service actions and impounds.
- Plaintiffs alleged inspectors steered tows and repairs to a private facility, Jimmy’s Lakeside Garage, enabling unnecessary or inflated repair charges and fees.
- Plaintiffs sued NJDOT, NJMVC, and multiple state officials in official and individual capacities, asserting federal civil-rights and related state-law claims.
- A key dispute involved preservation and production of state-employee emails: state officials received a litigation-threat letter on September 11, 2003, but did not issue a litigation hold until March 22, 2007, while routine deletion and backup-tape overwriting continued.
- By discovery, older emails existed primarily on backup tapes, with estimated restoration and search costs of about $1.5 million.
- Motions before the district court included: (1) state defendants’ motion to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6); (2) plaintiffs’ motion for leave to file a further amended complaint under Rule 15; and (3) plaintiffs’ appeal of a magistrate judge’s order denying broad restoration of backup tapes and addressing preservation failures.

## Issues

1. Whether Eleventh Amendment immunity barred damages claims against state agencies and state officials in their official capacities.
2. Whether the complaint adequately alleged personal involvement by individual officials, including supervisory liability, sufficient to survive dismissal.
3. Whether leave to amend should be granted under Rule 15 in light of delay, prejudice, and futility.
4. Whether pre-2008 backup-tape emails were “not reasonably accessible” under Rule 26(b)(2)(B), and whether plaintiffs showed good cause to compel restoration despite negligent preservation practices.

## Decision

- The court dismissed damages claims against state agencies and against officials sued in their official capacities to the extent barred by Eleventh Amendment immunity.
- The court allowed certain claims against individual state officials in their personal capacities to proceed where plaintiffs alleged participation in, direction of, or knowing acquiescence in discriminatory enforcement actions.
- The court dismissed some supervisory-liability allegations that lacked concrete facts showing knowledge, acquiescence, or deliberate indifference.
- The court granted leave to amend only in part, permitting clarifying corrections but denying major new theories and allegations as unduly delayed and prejudicial given the stage of the litigation and discovery history.
- The court affirmed the magistrate judge’s discovery ruling declining to compel wholesale restoration of backup-tape emails, finding no clear error and applying Rule 26(b)(2)(B).
- The court accepted that full backup-tape restoration would impose undue burden and cost (approximately $1.5 million) and concluded plaintiffs failed to show sufficient good cause for comprehensive restoration.
- The court upheld a limited, targeted approach permitting some backup-tape discovery subject to selection limits and potential cost-sharing/cost-shifting.

## Legal Principles

- Eleventh Amendment immunity generally bars suits in federal court for monetary relief against state agencies and state officials acting in their official capacities, absent consent or valid abrogation.
- Section 1983 liability cannot rest on respondeat superior; supervisory liability requires facts supporting personal involvement, such as direction, knowledge and acquiescence, or deliberate indifference to known misconduct.
- Rule 15 permits amendment when justice requires, but courts may deny leave for undue delay, repeated failure to cure deficiencies, undue prejudice to the opposing party, bad faith, or futility.
- Under Rule 26(b)(2)(B), a party need not produce ESI that is not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost; the requesting party must show good cause to obtain such discovery.
- Negligent preservation failures may be relevant to the Rule 26(b)(2)(B) analysis, but negligence alone does not require full restoration where the requesting party’s need is speculative or cumulative and the burden is substantial.
- Courts may order targeted restoration and use cost-shifting or cost-sharing as a proportional means to obtain potentially relevant inaccessible ESI.

## Conclusion

The court narrowed the civil-rights case by applying Eleventh Amendment immunity to bar damages claims against state entities and official-capacity defendants, required specific factual allegations for personal and supervisory liability, limited further amendments due to delay and prejudice, and affirmed a proportional e-discovery approach that treated backup-tape emails as not reasonably accessible absent good cause, while allowing limited, cost-conditioned restoration.


Major Tours, Inc. v. Colorel, 720 F. Supp. 2d 587 (D.N.J. 2010)