Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. v. Shell Oil Products US

In Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF’s) citizen suit alleging that Shell defendants failed to prepare a bulk storage and fuel terminal in the Port of Providence (Providence Terminal) for the impacts of climate change, the federal district court for the District of Rhode Island granted in part and denied in part each side’s motion to compel discovery. The court ruled that Shell must provide factual responses to questions regarding the defendants’ “knowledge and intent in designing, constructing and operating the Terminal with regard to specified flood/storm risks,” rejecting the argument that the documents and admissions sought were more appropriate for expert discovery. The court also rejected the Shell defendants’ contention that requested documents related generally to climate change and not restricted to the Providence Terminal were not relevant. The found, however, that CLF’s request for admissions about what is “possible” called for “irrelevant speculation.” Regarding the Shell defendants’ requests for documents related to “CLF’s institutional knowledge, fundraising, advocacy and communications,” the court found that the discovery was not relevant to the claims and defenses in issue and that to the extent it was “peripherally relevant” was “hopelessly overbroad,” though the court left open that possibility that such information could be relevant and proportional in a different circumstance. The court said both CLF and the Shell defendants could not refuse to respond based on the purported vagueness of requests, finding that the parties must respond based on their reasonable understandings of the requests.

A magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Rhode Island ruled on four motions to compel discovery in Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF’s) citizen suit seeking to hold Shell Oil Products US and certain affiliates liable for failing to prepare a bulk storage and fuel terminal in Providence for the effects of climate change. The court noted that it viewed “thorough and thoughtful” discovery rulings by the District of Connecticut in a similar lawsuit related to a New Haven facility as “relevant to the scope of discovery in the instant case.” The Rhode Island court allowed CLF to conduct a deposition of a Shell “metocean engineer” who had authored a case study regarding climate impacts on a facility in Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico coast. The court agreed with the plaintiff that the engineer “likely possesses relevant information regarding the issue of best industry practices” and found that the defendants did not show any undue burden, and also rejected the defendants’ contention that CLF improperly sought an unretained expert opinion. The court denied CLF’s motion to compel more responsive answers to interrogatories that CLF said were relevant to their operator liability claims, and found that many of CLF’s requests for additional production of documents from non-party Shell affiliates were “overly broad and disproportionate to the needs of the case,” as were eight other document requests. The court did, however, order production of non-duplicate documents in response to some requests for documents from non-parties as well as production of documents in response to four “more narrowly tailored” requests regarding “relatively narrow subject matters.”

The federal district court for the District of Rhode Island issued an order setting forth the course of discovery in Conservation Law Foundation’s citizen suit alleging that Shell Oil Products US and affiliates failed to prepare a bulk storage and fuel terminal in Providence, Rhode Island, for the impacts of climate change. The court noted that Conservation Law Foundation sought “far-reaching discovery”—including requests for documents concerning other Shell facilities and Shell’s knowledge of climate change—that was likely to be “very time consuming and expensive.” The defendants argued that they had agreed to provide some documents regarding corporate policies and that a deposition of the East Coast Lead Facility Engineer would be a more efficient discovery mechanism. The court concluded that “a more measured approach is warranted” before “potentially going down th[e] path” sought by the plaintiffs. The court therefore directed the defendants to continue producing documents they had agreed to produce and to produce the engineer for a deposition regarding how the Providence Terminal manages precipitation and flooding risks and who makes decisions for the terminal. The court further directed that the parties should use the results of this discovery “to continue to confer in good faith regarding the scope of document production” and said that if disputes remained, they could refile their motion to compel and cross-motion for protective order.