Rule 34.Production of documents and things and entry upon land for inspection and other purposes

Rule 34 covers two related discovery tools. Under section (a)(1), any party can ask another party to produce documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things for inspection, copying, testing, or sampling — a broad category that reaches writings, drawings, photographs, sound recordings, and any other data stored in a form that can be translated into something usable. Section (a)(2) covers a different kind of request: asking to enter property the responding party possesses or controls, to inspect, measure, survey, photograph, test, or sample the property itself or something on it.

A request under Rule 34 has to identify what's being sought, either item by item or by category, with enough particularity that the responding party knows exactly what's being asked for, and it has to specify a reasonable date, time, place, and manner for the inspection. A request can also specify the form electronically stored information should take. The responding party then has 28 days to serve a written response, restating each request before answering it. For each item or category, the response has to say either that inspection will be permitted as requested, or that the party objects — and an objection has to state its reasons with specificity. Skip a reason and it's waived unless the court excuses the omission for good cause. An objection also has to say whether any responsive items are being withheld on that basis; if the objection describes the search terms used, that description itself signals that items outside those terms may have been withheld. Whatever part of a request isn't objectionable still has to be answered and produced. If the responding party objects to the requested format for electronically stored information, or no format was specified at all, the response has to state what format the party intends to use.

Section (c) governs how the documents themselves come out. A party producing documents has to produce them as they're kept in the ordinary course of business, or organize and label them to match the categories in the request. If a request doesn't specify a format for electronically stored information, the responding party has to produce it in the form it's ordinarily kept in, or in a form that's reasonably usable — and nobody has to produce the same electronically stored information in more than one format.

A 2017 amendment tightened the objection requirements in section (b)(2), adding the specificity requirement, the obligation to say whether responsive items are being withheld, and the rule that a description of search terms counts as notice that other items may have been left out.