*1 The Court is in receipt of a joint letter from the parties, dated November 11, 2016, presenting a discovery dispute. (Doc. No. 66.) Plaintiffs move to compel an inspection of Defendants’ computer under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(3)(B)(iv). Defendants oppose the motion. For the reasons set forth below, Plaintiffs’ motion is DENIED without prejudice to renewal should Plaintiffs decide to depose Defendants and present adequate evidence of tampering or withholding.

The relevant facts for purposes of resolving this dispute are as follows. Plaintiffs assert that their “need to inspect Defendants’ electronic devices arises from Defendants’ production of visibly altered documents and their lack of production of documents as kept in their usual course of business” as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34(b)(2)(E)(i). (Id. at 3.) Specifically, Plaintiffs point to four documents that they claim provide “a strong basis to believe that [the documents] have been modified [by Defendants] in the course of this litigation,” (Id. at 1.) First, Defendants provided two Word documents into which part of an Excel spreadsheet had been pasted; unlike any other documents Defendants provided, these documents were titled “Weekly Totals For Week Ending.” Second, Defendants provided a document that listed all four Plaintiffs as bartenders, even though none of the Plaintiffs was employed as a bartender. Third, Plaintiffs assert that Defendants produced a document in which Plaintiffs’ total tip amounts had been “visibly manipulated.” (Id.) Because Plaintiffs believe that Defendants modified these four documents before providing them, they wish to “perform an inspection of the electronic devices Defendants utilized” to create the documents. In addition, Plaintiffs “also want to ascertain whether there are any additional tip sheet records that Defendants are not disclosing.” (Id.) In sum, Plaintiffs argue that certain discrepancies they perceived between the four identified documents and all the other documents Defendants have provided throughout discovery justify the inspection of Defendants’ computer systems for all tip sheet records created by Defendants Edwin Bellanco and Elizabeth Dugan during the past three years. (Id. at 1–2.)

Defendants’ response is twofold. First, with regard to the four documents Plaintiffs identify as having been “modified,” Defendants assert that any modifications were either inadvertent or did not alter the substance of the documents. In particular, Defendants claim that they inadvertently redacted the Plaintiffs’ names from one tip sheet, enlarged the Plaintiffs’ names on another “for clarity purposes only,” and pasted the substance of an Excel document into two Word documents without altering the content. (Id. at 4.) Then, at Plaintiffs’ request, “Defendants immediately sought to rectify any concern by reproducing these four pages, as kept in the ordinary course of business, confirming that no information had been altered[.]” (Id.) Second, with respect to Plaintiffs’ insinuation that Defendants have withheld additional tip sheets, Defendants argue that they have “fully complied with all appropriate discovery demands and Court orders, which have included the production of roughly 600 pages of documents,” including 200 pages of daily and weekly tip sheets concerning the Plaintiffs. (Id. at 3.) These 200 pages of tip sheets, Defendants add, “constitute[ ] the entirety of such documents in Defendants’ possession, custody and control.” (Id.) Defendants conclude by arguing that Plaintiffs have “failed to meet the exacting standards” required to justify their request to inspect Defendants’ computer systems directly. (Id. at 4.)

*2 Generally, “[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense[.]” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Relevance is “broadly construed ‘to encompass any matter that bears on, or that reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or may be in the case.’ ” Daval Steel Products, a Div. of Francosteel Corp. v. M/V Fakredine, 951 F.2d 1357, 1367 (2d Cir. 1991) (quoting Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 351 (1978)). Within the scope of Rule 26(b), parties may request electronically stored information. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(1)(A). However, Rule 26 allows a judge to limit discovery where “the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit, considering the needs of the case, the amount in controversy, the parties’ resources, the importance of the issues at stake in the action, and the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(iii). Of particular importance here, requests to inspect an opposing party's computer “are granted only under limited circumstances,” such as “when there is reason to believe that a litigant has tampered with the computer or hidden relevant materials despite demand for them in the course of the lawsuit.” Lifeng Chen v. New Trend Apparel, Inc., No. 11-cv-324 (GBD) (MHD), 2012 WL 4784855, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 2, 2012); see also Calyon v. Mizuho Sec. USA Inc., No. 07-cv-02241 (RO) (DF), 2007 WL 1468889, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. May 18, 2007) (collecting cases); Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 advisory committee's note to 2006 amendment (because “[i]nspection or testing of certain types of electronically stored information or of a responding party's electronic information system may raise issues of confidentiality or privacy,” Rule 34 “is not meant to create a routine right of direct access to a party's electronic information system”).

In this case, even assuming Plaintiffs’ request meets the relevance requirement of Rule 26 – which is not clear, because Plaintiffs, without explanation, seek access to three years’ worth of electronically stored tip sheets, although their tip-misappropriation claim arose only in 2015 – the request fails the Rule's proportionality requirement. The scant evidence that Plaintiffs cite as proof that Defendants tampered with four of the 200-odd pages of tip records they have provided is simply not compelling; Defendants offer good-faith explanations for the slight alterations, and Plaintiffs do not dispute that Defendants readily provided the correct versions of the four documents upon request. And there is no evidence at all that Defendants systematically failed to disclose relevant tip sheet records. Plaintiffs’ insinuations on that score seem founded on mere suspicion. Altogether, Plaintiffs here have demonstrated no “widespread destruction or withholding of relevant information” that would justify the burden and expense of their proposed inspection of Defendants’ computers. Convolve, Inc. v. Compaq Computer Corp., 223 F.R.D. 162, 169 (S.D.N.Y. 2004); see also Bethea v. Comcast, 218 F.R.D. 328, 330 (D.D.C. 2003) (“[A] party's suspicion that another party has failed to respond to document requests fully and completely does not justify compelled inspection of its computer systems.”); Med. Billing Consultants, Inc. v. Intelligent Med. Objects, Inc., No. 01-cv-9148, 2003 WL 1809465, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 4, 2003) (request to inspect defendants’ computer “likely to unduly burden defendants without leading to the discovery of otherwise unobtainable relevant evidence” when defendants had turned over inadvertently withheld email and there was no further evidence of withholding or tampering). Plaintiffs are free, of course, to depose Defendants in order to better assess whether Defendants have in fact withheld or tampered with any tip records. See Piccone v. Town of Webster, No. 09-cv-6266T, 2010 WL 3516581, at *9 (W.D.N.Y. Sept. 3, 2010) (denying motion to compel computer inspection founded on suspicion that party had withheld data, but noting that opposing party could conduct depositions to seek actual evidence of withholding).

Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT Plaintiffs’ motion is DENIED without prejudice to renewal should Plaintiffs decide to depose Defendants and present adequate evidence of tampering or withholding. Because the Court is denying the motion without prejudice to renewal, the Court also denies both parties’ requests for attorneys’ fees and costs.

*3 SO ORDERED.