In Wright v. SLWM, LLC, No. 2024-1339-JTL (Del. Ch. June 25, 2025), Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster rejected Defendant’s “Improper Boilerplate Objections” with a detailed breakdown of the types of boilerplate objections and why they were being rejected.
Case Discussion and Judge’s Ruling
In this case involving a dispute between a former employee of Defendant and which non-compete agreement should be enforced, Vice Chancellor Laster opened his order by stating: “The plaintiff served interrogatories and requests for production of documents. The defendant bobbed and weaved, relying on a host of general objections. The parties met and conferred, but made little progress. The plaintiff moved to compel. This decision grants the motion. By separate order, the court will appoint a discovery facilitator to help the parties develop and implement a reasonable process for collecting, reviewing, and producing documents.”
Noting that “Boilerplate objections obfuscate”, Vice Chancellor Laster stated “Boilerplate objections are unfair to the requesting party, because they fail to inform the requesting party why its request is specifically objectionable. They also force parties to expend resources unnecessarily, because the requesting party must follow up with deficiency letters and meet-and-confer sessions to find out what, if anything, the boilerplate objections mean. And they waste judicial resources, because courts end up having to rule on the boilerplate objections themselves or attempt to assess the validity of responses laden with objections.”
Vice Chancellor Laster then proceeded to breakdown the different types of boilerplate objections, as follows:
“To the extent that” Objections: These are improper if they don’t identify how the request fails to comply with rules or provide information about what will be produced. Vice Chancellor Laster overruled SLWM’s objection “to the Requests to the extent they seek to impose objections on SLWM greater than or different from those established by the applicable Chancery Court rules,” finding it “obfuscatory.”
Vagueness and Ambiguity Objections: Responding parties must “specifically object to what is vague or ambiguous and explain how the responding party will interpret the request to make a good-faith effort to respond.” Objections to commonly understood terms are improper. SLWM’s objections to “status of the account” were overruled as the phrase had a clear meaning in context.
Relevance Objections: A general objection of “not relevant” is insufficient; the party must explain why. The court found all of Wright’s requested materials (e.g., related to his resignation, performance, customer communications, account status) “obviously relevant” to his claims (e.g., forced resignation, Company disparagement). SLWM’s generalized relevance objections were overruled.
Burden, Overbreadth, and Proportionality Objections: These objections must specify why a request is overbroad, unduly burdensome, or disproportionate, using the factors identified in Rule 26(b)(1) (e.g., importance of issues, amount in controversy, parties’ resources, importance of discovery).
- SLWM’s initial objections were “rote boilerplate” and provided no details.
- SLWM’s attempt to provide factual details in a post-hoc declaration (Marchetti Declaration) in response to the motion to compel was deemed “too late” and an improper “post hoc justification for a previously unsupported and otherwise improper objection.”
- Vice Chancellor Laster reiterated that it is not the requesting party’s job to identify custodians or propose search terms. As stated in Sedona Principle 6, “Responding parties are best situated to evaluate the procedures, methodologies, and technologies for preserving and producing their own electronically stored information.” Demanding this is “an improper effort by the responding party to offload their discovery obligations onto the requesting party.”
- Vice Chancellor Laster encouraged cooperation and transparency in discovery, noting that “Candor and fair-dealing are, or should be, the hallmark of litigation.”
- Vice Chancellor Laster advocated for discussing “categories of information” and developing a “search plan designed to obtain the information sought using a combination of techniques, including metadata searches, sampling, and technology assisted review.”
- SLWM’s burden/overbreadth/proportionality objections were overruled. Vice Chancellor Laster added that “By separate order, the court will appoint Tara Emory, an experienced discovery professional, as a discovery facilitator to help the parties design and implement a reasonable discovery protocol. That effort will include determining an appropriate time period for production, which may include different time periods for different types of information.”
In granting the motion to compel over Defendant’s improper boilerplate objections, Vice Chancellor Laster also stated: “Because the Company’s objections were not substantially justified, Wright is entitled to the expenses (including attorneys’ fees) incurred pursuing the motion. That natural consequence forces the Company to internalize the burdens that its improper objections created.”
So, what do you think? Why do you think we continue to see so many improper boilerplate objections? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Case opinion link courtesy of Minerva26, an Affinity partner of eDiscovery Today.
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