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Policing Boilerplate: Reckoning And Reforming Rule 34’S Popular—Yet Problematic—Construction, Amir Shachmurove

Northern Illinois University Law Review

At the beginning, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure created a most liberal regime for the discovery of facts and winnowing of issues, awarding parties such essential tools as interrogatories, as set forth in Rule 33, and requests for production, governed by Rule 34. In the last two decades, in response to the seeming failure of this construct to achieve an efficient and just determination of every action, courts have begun to police the use of boilerplate objections to requests for production. Recognizing no distinction between types of boilerplate and acknowledging neither the textual differences within the rules nor the …