*1 This matter is before the Magistrate Judge on the motion of Defendants Ashley Keever; Exxogear, LLC; Exxo Gear Group, Inc.; Advisant, Inc.; God Cloud, LLC; Instant Merchant Group, LLC; Kryptobit, LLC; Worthington Holdings, LLC; and Castle Venture Group, LLC (collectively, the Keever Entities) for a protective order or to quash four subpoenas issued by the plaintiffs to financial institutions Ally Bank, Capital One, U.S. Bank National Association, and Regions Bank. (Doc. No. 154.) For the reasons that follow, the motion is DENIED.

I. Background

The plaintiffs in this action are related companies that develop and market interests in vacation timeshare properties. They allege that the defendants interfered in their relationships with timeshare owners by, among other acts, offering legal services to extract the owners from their timeshare contracts. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants made false representations regarding the services they would provide and encouraged time-share owners to stop paying fees to the plaintiffs and to terminate their business relationships. The plaintiffs further allege that the defendants used “incestuous shell companies to divert, otherwise hide and abscond with funds” paid to them by the plaintiffs’ clients. The plaintiffs state that the Keever Entities[1] are corporate entities held, in part or in full, by William Keever or Ashley Keever. The plaintiffs allege that the Keever Entities were “intentionally created for the purpose of, among other wrongful purposes, improvidently siphoning funds garnered from timeshare owners ... in a concerted and underhanded effort to hide such funds and assets from reach.” The plaintiffs allege that the Keever Entities are “nothing more than sham entities, mostly solely owned” and “are in place to purposefully hide assets and/or transfer funds to avoid liability.” (Doc. No. 111.)

The subpoenas in question are identical and ask each financial institution to produce information related to accounts held by the Keever Entities, as well as accounts held by Defendants Ashley Keever, William Michael Keever, Sean Austin, and Judson Phillips.[2] Specifically, the subpoenas seek, from June 1, 2014, to the present, all: “(1) bank account statements, (2) deposit records, (3) copies of deposited checks, (4) copies of canceled checks, (5) copies of Cashier’s, Manager’s or Bank Checks, Traveler’s Checks, and Money Orders, (6) account applications and/or opening documents, including but not limited to powers of attorney, (7) signature cards, (8) credit and debit memos, (9) Form 1099, 1089, or back-up withholding documents, and (10) customer correspondence files and/or copies of any and all correspondence from or to Wilshire Group LLC; William Michael Keever; Ashley Keever; Sean Austin; Judson Phillips; Worthington Holdings, LLC; Castle Law Group, P.C.; Castle Marketing Group, LLC; Castle Venture Group, LLC; God Cloud, LLC; Advisant, Inc.; Kryptobit, LLC; Instant Merchant Group, LLC; and Exxogear, LLC.” (See, e.g., Doc. No. 155-1.)

*2 Ashley Keever and the Keever Entities seek a protective order against the subpoenas on grounds that they are overbroad and seek information that is not relevant to the merits stage of the litigation. They also argue that the subpoenas should be quashed because their breadth renders them unduly burdensome. Finally, they argue that the subpoenas must be invalidated because they do not comply with the requirements of the Tennessee Financial Records Privacy Act. (Doc. No. 155.)

The plaintiffs argue in response that Keever and the Keever Entities lack standing to move to quash subpoenas issued to third-party financial institutions. They argue that the information requested is relevant to their claims that the defendants perpetrated a fraud by funneling purported legal fees to the Keever Entities and that the requests are reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Finally, the plaintiffs state that they have corrected any technical shortcomings in the subpoenas to the best of their abilities. (Doc. No. 162.)

II. Analysis

“Ordinarily a party has no standing to seek to quash a subpoena issued to someone who is not a party to the action, unless the objecting party claims some personal right or privilege with regard to the documents sought.” 9A Charles Alan Wright and Arthur R. Miller, et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 2549 (3d ed.); see also United States v. Llanez-Garcia, 735 F.3d 483, 498 (6th Cir. 2013) (recognizing lack of standing to challenge third-party subpoena absent a claim of privilege); Morrow v. Cmty. Health Sys. Inc., No. 3:16-01953, 2017 WL 2989374, at *2 (M.D. Tenn. Apr. 20, 2017) (same). But, where a party’s standing may fall short to quash a subpoena under Rule 45, Rule 26(c) affords parties the ability to move for a protective order on a third party’s behalf. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c); Morrow, 2017 WL 2989374 at *2. Because Keever and the Keever Entities state that determining standing under Rule 45 is “unnecessary” to resolving their motion, the Court will not address their arguments that such standing does exist.[3] (Doc. No. 165, PageID# 3099.) Instead, the Court turns to the argument that a protective order should issue to prevent disclosure of this information under Rule 26(c).

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) provides that “a party ... may move for a protective order in the court where the action is pending.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c). The court may issue a protective order to prevent “annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense” arising from the challenged discovery. Id. The party moving for the protective order must show good cause for it to issue “with a particular and specific demonstration of fact, as distinguished from stereotyped and conclusory statement.” In re Ohio Execution Protocol Litig., 845 F.3d 231, 236 (6th Cir. 2016). “Good cause exists if ‘specific prejudice or harm will result’ from the absence of a protective order.” Id. (quoting Father M. v. Various Tort Claimants (In re Roman Catholic Archbishop), 661 F.3d 417 424 (9th Cir. 2011) ). “Rule 26(c) confers broad discretion on the trial court to decide when a protective order is appropriate and what degree of protection is required.” Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 36 (1984).

*3 Keever and the Keever Entities argue, first, that none of the information sought by the subpoenas “could conceivably impact Plaintiffs’ claims” and that it is therefore irrelevant for purposes of Rule 26(b). (Doc. No. 155, PageID# 2812.) They argue that, even if the financial records showed a transfer of funds from Castle Law to any of the Keever Entities, that would have “no bearing” on the plaintiffs’ claims and defenses regarding Castle Law’s alleged interference with the plaintiffs’ business relationships. (Id. at PageID# 2813.) At best, they argue, this information could be relevant “in a subsequent collections action” against the Castle defendants. (Id.)

The plaintiffs respond that this argument addresses only some of the claims that they bring in this action and ignores their claims that the Keever Entities participated in a civil conspiracy that included “siphon[ing] money out of Castle Law and into the Defendants’ other incestuous entities ....” (Doc. No. 162, PageID# 2881.) The plaintiffs also point to deposition testimony taken from former Castle Law employee Laura Blevins that legal fees charged by Castle Law Group were filtered through Castle Marketing Group and used to fund “all of the other companies and business entities that [the individual defendants] later created.” (Doc. No. 162-1, PageID# 2895.) They also cite documents obtained from already-subpoenaed financial information that, they state, shows transfers of funds from the Castle businesses to the Keever Entities. (Doc. No. 162, PageID# 2881–82; Doc. No. 169-1, PageID# 3282–3291.)

It appears that the gravamen of relevance argument made by Keever and the Keever Entities is their belief that they are improperly named as defendants to this action. They state that, “[i]n the interest of party and judicial economy ... [they] have been waiting to move to be dismissed as part of more comprehensive motion practice.” (Id. at PageID# 2806.) Whether or not Keever and the Keever Entities move to be dismissed at some future point, however, the plaintiffs have alleged claims that include the transfer of funds among the Castle and Keever Entities as a central theory of liability in the action as it now stands. The subpoenaed information is relevant to those claims. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1).

The Court must therefore determine whether production of the subpoenaed information will cause “annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1). Keever and the Keever Entities argue only that the production will be unduly burdensome because the subpoenas are overbroad. (Doc. No. 155, PageID# 2814.) Specifically, they point to language in the subpoenas requesting “any and all correspondence” between the financial institutions and fourteen entities which, they argue, will result in a “staggering” array of production. (Id. at PageID# 2816.) The plaintiffs do not substantively address the argument that the requested production is unduly burdensome.

When a party seeks a protective order on grounds that requested discovery is unduly burdensome “they are not simply asserting the rights of the third party, but their own right to reasonable discovery and efficient disposition of the case.” Shukh v. Seagate Tech., LLC, 295 F.R.D. 228, 236 (D. Minn. 2013). Parties are particularly well-suited to object on behalf of an outside entity to discovery that is irrelevant or cumulative—indeed, the parties may be the only ones in a position to make an argument on those grounds. See id. Here, however, the Keever Entities argue only that compliance with the subpoenas would be unduly burdensome to the financial institutions because of the burdens of production—an argument that requires a “particular and specific demonstration of fact” of what production would require and why it is outside the bounds of reasonableness for the entity that will have to make the production. In re Ohio Execution Protocol Litig., 845 F.3d at 236. Keever and the Keever Entities offer no demonstration of fact to support that conclusion. Accordingly, the Court finds that the record before it does not support issuing a protective order against the plaintiffs’ subpoenas.

*4 Finally, Keever and the Keever Entities argue that the subpoenas are fatally defective because they do not comply with the requirement of the Tennessee Financial Records Privacy Act that they describe with specificity the “name and address of the customer ... name or functional description of the records ... time period covered by the records; and ... [a]ny additional information necessary to identify the records sought.” Tenn. Code. Ann. § 45-10-107(a)(2). Keever and the Keever Entities state that the subpoenas “request information pertaining to account numbers that are not tied to customer names or mailing addresses.” (Doc. No. 165, PageID# 3104.)

It is not clear to the Court that Keever and the Keever Entities have standing to challenge the subpoenas under this statute, which “contemplate[s] that due process protections be afforded to financial institutions as well as to their customers” and, by this section, provides the financial institution “a guide ... to determine the facial validity of a subpoena ... and the grounds for contesting the validity and sufficiency of a subpoena.” State, Dep’t of Revenue v. Moore, 722 S.W.2d 367, 376 (Tenn. 1986); Tenn. Code Ann. § 45-10-107(d), (e) (setting out process by which a financial institution may refuse to comply with a deficient subpoena). Regardless, it appears that this issue is now moot because the plaintiffs have supplemented the subpoenas with the necessary information. (Doc. No. 162-3, PageID# 2911–22.) Should the financial institutions find the subpoenas still deficient, the statute provides them with adequate remedy to refuse to comply until additional information is provided.

III. Conclusion

For these reasons, the Keever Entities’ motion to quash or, in the alternative, for a protective order (Doc. No. 154) is DENIED.

It is so ORDERED.