*1 Before the Court is Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Responses to Written Discovery. [Doc. #73]. Having reviewed the pleadings, the case law, and the parties’ supplemental position papers, the Court rules as follows.

I. Background

This lawsuit began as an action to recover unpaid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). On June 21, 2016, plaintiff Lyndsay Blank (“Blank” or “plaintiff”) filed this lawsuit as a collective action alleging violations of the FLSA for unpaid overtime on June 21, 2016. On April 19, 2017, the District Court conditionally certified a class of Tomorrow PCS (“TPCS”) employees who worked as Sales Associates for the last three years and were not paid overtime. Class notice was sent and four other TPCS Sales Associates have now joined the action to recover unpaid overtime.

Plaintiff later amended her complaint to add Tomorrow Telecom Incorporated (“Telecom”) as a defendant after deposing the owner of both companies.

II. The Parties’ Arguments

Plaintiff propounded written discovery requests on Telecom on October 23, 2017. Telecom issued responses on November 22, 2017. Plaintiff maintains that Telecom’s responses contained only blanket objections that misstated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33 and asserted unsupported objections as to relevance and undue burden for the production of documents.

Telecom specifically objects to one interrogatory and one request for production (“RFP”) propounded by plaintiff. The interrogatory propounded to Telecom requests the names, job titles, job responsibilities, and the corporate entity that employs every person with an @tomorrowtelecom.com email address for the last five years. Plaintiff contends that the identity of those who used an @tomorrowtelecom.com email is clearly relevant to 1) determine the identity and location of all Telecom-affiliated Metro PCS authorized dealers; 2) Telecom’s control and supervision over the day-to-day operations of all Telecom-affiliated stores; and 3) Telecom’s role in processing, issuing, and implementing chargebacks on the payroll of TPCS employees and employees at other Telecom-affiliated stores.

Telecom refuses to respond to plaintiff’s interrogatory, first stating that it violates Rule 33 because the response “would require more than twenty-five (25) answers.” Plaintiff argues that this is a misreading of Rule 33, which clearly limits the number of interrogatories to 25, not the number of answers it takes to fully respond to an interrogatory. Telecom also asserted that the information is not relevant to plaintiff’s claims, is overly broad, and unduly burdensome. But plaintiff argues that she has recovered preliminary email evidence showing that Telecom employees emailed payroll and health insurance plan information to TPCS employees.

The RFP to which Telecom objects seeks all email correspondence to or from six Telecom/TPCS employees who had interactions with plaintiff or other Telecom/TPCS employees. Plaintiff contends that this information is relevant to Telecom’s employer status, control over payroll, and implementation of the chargeback scheme. Telecom objected to this request as irrelevant, overly broad, and unduly burdensome. Telecom asserted that obtaining the requested emails would be overly burdensome because those Telecom employees would have to go through their emails, prepare them for production, and have the emails reviewed by Telecom’s counsel before they could be produced.

*2 Citing Rule 33 in their opposition, defendants contend that plaintiff can not propound more than 25 interrogatories. Because Telecom has had approximately 45 people use @tomorrowtelecom.com email domains over the past five years, defendants argue that answering this interrogatory would amount to answering 180 interrogatories, which is impermissible.

Defendants maintain that because plaintiffs’ claims are for overtime pay and charge backs relating to her employment at TPCS, the interrogatory has nothing to do with who uses a certain email domain and is thus irrelevant to her claim. Defendants argue that given that plaintiff admits that she only worked at PCS for the past three (3) years and there are only four opt-in employees who worked even less time than plaintiff, the interrogatory is overly broad on its face. Defendants further argue that the interrogatory is overly broad in that it is not limited to employees of Telecom that communicated with or about plaintiffs and is not limited to information about overtime or chargebacks.

With regard to the request for production, defendants maintain that virtually all of the responsive emails would be completely irrelevant to the claims of this case, which are that plaintiff alleges she wasn’t paid overtime, and that she was charged back money. Defendants contend that this would amount to hundreds, if not thousands, of documents, all the while costing defendants money in that defendants would be required to use paper and ink to reduce the emails to tangible form. They maintain that the request is facially overbroad in that it doesn’t limit what emails are requested in any way, does not limit the request to the relevant time frame, and in particular Jong Park – the owner of both companies – has already been granted summary judgment. Defendants argue that the request is designed to harass, cause burden, and oppress defendants by requesting such a voluminous amount of emails that it effectively stops management at the defendant companies for an extended period of time. Defendants assert that these emails may contain sensitive information such as social security numbers of employees, personal information of employees, and confidential and trade secret information of the businesses. Defendants argue that plaintiff’s argument that Telecom employees emailed payroll and health insurance plan information to TPCS employees is a red herring, when in review of the alleged emails, only one email, attached as Exhibit 10 to plaintiff’s motion, even includes Lindsay Blank, and it contains only a forwarded message and no text or context.

After the oral hearing, the Court ordered Blank to re-propound more narrowly-tailored requests, after which defendant would inform this Court whether the disputed issues were moot. [Doc. #83]. The parties have complied with that minute entry, and disputes still remain.

III. Law and Analysis

The Court first notes that defendants misinterpret and misread the clear language of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33. Rule 33(a)(1) only provides that a party may not propound more than 25 interrogatories. The language says nothing about how many responses may be necessary to respond to any particular interrogatory, and this Court has found no case law to support defendants’ argument here.

With regard to Interrogatory No. 1, the Court finds that defendants’ proposed interrogatory is more narrowly-tailored to be proportionate to the needs of the case. Blank properly limited the interrogatory temporally to three (3) years – the time period during which Blank worked for defendants – but defendant’s proposed interrogatory more narrowly addresses the specific issues raised in this lawsuit, namely, chargebacks and overtime, and is more proportionate to the needs of the lawsuit.

*3 With regard to Request for Production (“RFP”) No. 1, The Court finds that an amalgamation of Blank’s and defendants’ proposed RFPs is proper. The Court notes that – again – Blank properly limited the RFP temporally to three (3) years, but the Court also finds that many of the search terms proposed by Blank are overbroad in that they are common terms with numerous definitions that are not proportionate to the needs of this lawsuit. Searching with such terms would reveal many documents not associated in any way with the issues in this lawsuit. For example, a search of the emails with the vague and overbroad term “sales” would most certainly reveal emails that are not relevant to the issues here and through which defendant would have to cull for relevance. Accordingly, having reviewed the terms proposed by Blank, the Court strikes ONLY the following terms from the email search:

Charge, Back, Sales, Associate, Representative, Check, Move, Transfer, Replace, Need More, Career, Market, Train, Operation, GM, Group, Stub, Team, and all locational words other than those associated with Louisiana and Texas. In addition, any phrase of two words or more must be surrounded by quotation marks in order to limit the hits to only those relevant emails. In all other ways, the Court finds acceptable Blank’s RFP. One final caveat: Defendants are only required to produce those documents that are in their possession, custody, or control. For example, if Yahoo! automatically deletes emails after a certain period or after a certain data level is reached, it is then Blank’s responsibility to subpoena the appropriate party in an attempt to obtain the documents. Accordingly, and for the reasons outlined above,

IT IS ORDERED that Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Responses to Written Discovery [Doc. #73] is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART as outlined above. Defendants shall respond to the discovery requests as modified no later than ten (10) days from the date of this Order.

New Orleans, Louisiana, this 26th day of February, 2018.