§ 2017.020.Judicial limits upon discovery; order; sanctions; exceptions

Section 2017.010 sets a broad scope for discovery; this section gives courts the authority to narrow it back down when a particular request costs more than it is worth. A court must limit the scope of discovery if it determines that the burden, expense, or intrusiveness of what is sought clearly outweighs the likelihood that it will lead to admissible evidence, but only on a motion for a protective order brought by a party or another affected person, and that motion has to come with a meet and confer declaration showing a genuine attempt to resolve the dispute first.

Because this kind of motion can be used well or used as a weapon, the section attaches a mandatory sanction. If a party, person, or attorney unsuccessfully makes or opposes a motion for a protective order under this section, the court must impose a monetary sanction, unless it finds that the losing side acted with substantial justification or that some other circumstance would make a sanction unjust. That default toward sanctions is meant to discourage both overreaching discovery demands and meritless attempts to block legitimate ones.

The section closes with the same electronic-data safe harbor that recurs throughout the discovery statutes: absent exceptional circumstances, a court will not sanction a party or attorney for failing to produce electronically stored information that was lost, damaged, altered, or overwritten through the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system. That protection does not excuse anyone from an existing duty to preserve information that remains discoverable.