Opinion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 10 11 MASHID WADEEA, Individually and on Case No.: 24-cv-1587-JLS-DDL Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, 12 ORDER RE PRODUCTION OF Plaintiff, 13 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING ROAD v. HAZARDS 14 MERCEDES-BENZ USA, LLC, a 15 Delaware Corporation, 16 Defendant. 17 18 I. 19 INTRODUCTION 20 The issue is whether documents reflecting tire damage due to “road hazards” are 21 relevant to a claim or defense under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 and responsive to 22 Plaintiff’s requests for production (“RFPs”). Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (“MBUSA”) says 23 “no” and contends it has communicated this position to Plaintiff repeatedly throughout the 24 litigation. Plaintiff disagrees and responds she was unaware that MBUSA withheld 25 documents reflecting tire issues due solely to “road hazards” as non-responsive to 26 Plaintiff’s RFPs. After learning of this issue at a hearing on February 13, 2026, the Court 27 directed the parties to submit further briefing on their respective positions. See Dkt. Nos. 28 235, 243. This Order follows. 1 II. 2 DISCUSSION 3 A. Production Of Repair Orders 4 On December 3, 2025, the Court granted Plaintiff’s motion to compel MBUSA to 5 produce repair orders maintained by Mercedes-Benz dealers, finding that MBUSA “has 6 legal control over the repair orders and is obligated to produce a subset of orders from 7 California Mercedes-Benz dealerships that is proportionate to the needs of the case.” Dkt. 8 No. 206 (“December 3 Order”) at 2. The December 3 Order expressly found that the repair 9 orders “are relevant to Plaintiff’s claims” in that they “have a clear relation to the alleged 10 defect and Defendant’s knowledge thereof.” Id. at 10. The Court directed the parties to 11 meet and confer regarding the appropriate scope of repair orders to be produced. The 12 parties reached agreement on the specific dealerships whose repair orders MBUSA would 13 produce, and MBUSA produced the repair orders in January 2026. Dkt. Nos. 185, 187. 14 MBUSA did not seek clarification or reconsideration of the December 3 Order’s 15 determination that repair orders maintained by the dealerships are relevant to Plaintiff’s 16 claims. Nor did MBUSA advise the Court that it intended to produce a limited subset of 17 the repair orders. Rather, MBUSA asserts that, following the December 3 Order, it agreed 18 to produce repair orders from 23 dealerships but that “when this Court expanded search 19 terms to include ‘wheel OR rim,’ MBUSA was required to review the dealerships’ repair 20 orders to determine which documents were responsive to plaintiff’s RFP 42.” Dkt. No. 21 235 at 13. Specifically, MBUSA says it reviewed 5,262 repair order documents obtained 22 from the dealerships and produced repair orders indicating “there was a tire replacement 23 due to bubbles, cracks or a blow out” and repair orders indicating a “tire replacement” with 24 no further information. Dkt. No. 235-1 at 3. However, if a repair order “was simply about 25 routine maintenance” or “was solely related to an impact or road hazard (such as a screw, 26 nail, pothole, curb),” then MBUSA marked it as non-responsive to RFP No. 42 and did not 27 produce it. Id. 28 / / / 1 MBUSA’s argument that it properly reviewed the repair orders for responsiveness 2 is unpersuasive. The December 3 Order held that the repair orders maintained by 3 Mercedes-Benz dealerships are within MBUSA’s legal control and are relevant to 4 Plaintiff’s claims. The only remaining issue was “the number of dealers from which 5 [MBUSA] will obtain repair orders and the identity of those dealers.” Dkt. No. 206 at 10. 6 The December 3 Order did not authorize MBUSA to further limit its production to the 7 repair orders that MBUSA deemed responsive to search terms. And MBUSA’s assertion 8 that a prior order issued months earlier in July 2025 directing MBUSA to utilize “wheel 9 OR rim” as search terms for MBUSA’s custodial documents (Dkt. No. 45 at 3) somehow 10 required MBUSA to limit its production of repair orders was not raised with the Court and 11 is not consistent with the December 3 Order. 12 According to MBUSA, it reviewed 5,262 repair order documents, produced 1,332 13 of them and determined the remaining 3,930 documents were not responsive to RFP No. 14 42. Dkt. No. 235-1 at 5. For the foregoing reasons, the Court concludes that all the repair 15 orders collected by MBUSA fall within the scope of the December 3 Order and ORDERS 16 MBUSA to produce the remaining 3,930 repair order documents by not later than May 4, 17 2026. 18 B. Production of Custodial Documents 19 MBUSA explains that it agreed to run 60 search terms across its custodial data and 20 that it produced documents responsive to Plaintiff’s RFPs using the same review criteria 21 described above. Dkt. No. 235-1 at 6-12. Applying this criteria, MBUSA produced 1,100 22 documents and determined that 33,655 documents were non-responsive. Id. at 13. 23 MBUSA notes that it “cannot ascertain the number of documents that were marked non- 24 responsive as a result of road hazards versus other issues,” such “other issues” including, 25 for example, a document containing the search term “wheel” that refers to a “steering 26 wheel,” which all parties agree is not relevant to a claim or defense. Id. 27 The parties dispute whether MBUSA’s discovery responses or meet and confer 28 communications put Plaintiff on notice of the criteria that MBUSA utilized to determine 1 whether documents identified through search terms were responsive to Plaintiff’s RFPs. 2 Plaintiff argues that MBUSA’s May 2025 discovery responses stating it would produce 3 documents “related to the alleged defect on tires sold with the putative Class Vehicles” did 4 not state that MBUSA was deeming documents pertaining to “road hazards” as non- 5 responsive. However, in a Joint Status Report filed on October 10, 2025, the parties 6 advised: 7 The final item in Plaintiff’s email is regarding the volume of MBUSA’s ESI 8 production due to its responsiveness rate. MBUSA states that its 9 responsiveness rate reflects overbroad search terms and that it limited its 10 responses to many RFPs to only producing documents concerning the alleged 11 defect as it relates to putative Class Vehicles, but it has found extremely few 12 documents that relate to Plaintiff’s spontaneous tire blowout theory. Plaintiff 13 still has not identified a potential cause or source of the blowouts, and without 14 such specificity there are very limited numbers of responsive documents. 15 MBUSA further states that Plaintiff has failed to identify any specific 16 deficiencies in MBUSA’s production or pointed to any particular documents 17 that are missing from its production (other than those described in paragraph 18 6 above) and are in MBUSA’s possession, custody, or control and MBUSA 19 agreed to produce in response to a specific RFP. Further, on October 9, 2025, 20 MBUSA sent Plaintiff an email identifying sources that support the 21 responsiveness rate of MBUSA’s productions. 22 Dkt. No. 155 at 4 (emphasis added). Regardless of whether MBUSA’s discovery responses 23 put Plaintiff on notice that MBUSA was withholding documents pertaining to tire damage 24 cause solely by “road hazards,” the record reflects that MBUSA had communicated the 25 limitations on its document production to Plaintiff by not later than October 2025. 26 Moreover, the Court provided the parties an opportunity to raise issues with respect to 27 MBUSA’s document production at a subsequent status conference on November 13, 2025, 28 and Plaintiff did not raise this issue. See Dkt. No. 166. Accordingly, MBUSA has a strong 1 argument that Plaintiff did not timely raise this issue pursuant to the Court’s Chambers 2 Rules. 3 Even if the Court were to conclude that Plaintiff timely raised this issue, the relief to 4 be granted is unclear. The record does not clearly reflect any specific document that hit on 5 one or more of the search terms but that MBUSA deemed non-responsive because it 6 pertained solely to “road hazards,” and the Court will not require MBUSA to re-review the 7 33,655 documents deemed non-responsive based on the current record. After all, by 8 agreeing to use the 60 search terms, MBUSA did not thereby agree that all documents 9 containing those search terms were responsive to Plaintiff’s RFPs and relevant to a claim 10 or defense. See SinglePoint Direct Solar LLC v. Solar Integrated Roofing Corp., No. CV- 11 21-01076-PHX-JAT, 2023 WL 2585296, at *3 (D. Ariz. Mar. 21, 2023) (“by running a 12 relevant search term, the responding party does not waive relevance objections to the 13 documents responsive to the search term”). In the interests of resolving this issue 14 efficiently, the Court will perform a targeted in camera review of MBUSA’s document 15 production as set forth below. 16 III. 17 CONCLUSION 18 For the foregoing reasons, the Court ORDERS as follows: 19 1. By not later than May 6, 2026, MBUSA shall produce the remaining 3,930 20 repair order documents. 21 2. By not later than May 6, 2026, MBUSA shall provide to the Court for in 22 camera review the following: (1) the first 200 pages of the 33,655 custodial documents 23 containing search terms that MBUSA deemed non-responsive to Plaintiff’s RFPs and 24 (2) the first 20 custodial documents containing search terms that were deemed non- 25 responsive because they pertain solely to “road hazards.” MBUSA shall provide the 26 foregoing documents with Bates numbers to the Clerk’s Office either in hard copy with 27 each of the two document categories in a separate binder or on a flash drive with each of 28 the two document categories in a single PDF file. 1 3. The Court will issue a further order following the in camera review. 2 IT IS SO ORDERED. 3 || Dated: April 27, 2026 git ° ‘Hon. DavidD.Leshner 6 United States Magistrate Judge 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28