*1 On January 6, 2023, defendants It's Just Lunch International LLC and IJL US LLC filed a motion to compel plaintiffs Rosanne Vrugtman, Tammy Gillingwater, and Nicole Kruzick to produce documents, answer interrogatories, and pay sanctions. Docket no. 54. Defendants' motion is supported by the declaration of their counsel Matthew K. Wegner (“Wegner Decl.”) and exhibits. Plaintiffs did not respond to defendants' meet and confer efforts, provide their portion of the joint stipulation, or file an opposition to defendants' motion. Wegner Decl. ¶ 8.

The court finds a hearing on this motion would not be of assistance, and so vacates the hearing scheduled for March 7, 2023. The court now grants defendants' motion to compel discovery and sanctions for the reasons discussed below.

Plaintiffs, users of defendants' dating service, allege defendants committed fraud, fraudulent inducement, and violations of California consumer protection statutes. Plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”) on June 14, 2021. Docket no. 29. On April 18, 2022, defendants served their first sets of requests for production of documents (“RFPs”) and interrogatories on each of plaintiffs Vrugtman, Gillingwater, and Kruzick. Wegner Decl. ¶¶ 2-3, Exs. A-B.

Plaintiffs served written responses to defendants' RFPs and interrogatories on June 14, 2022. Wegner Decl. ¶ 4. Plaintiffs asserted largely boilerplate objections to all of defendants' requests, including that they were overbroad, unreasonably cumulative, and request information already known to defendants. Wegner Decl., Exs. C-D. Subject to those objections, plaintiffs provided a handful of answers to defendants' interrogatories and produced a combined eleven pages of documents consisting of their form contracts. Wegner Decl. ¶¶ 4-5, Exs. C-D. Plaintiffs also promised to produce additional responsive documents, but had not done so as of the filing of defendants' motion. Wegner Decl. ¶ 5, Ex. C.

On October 31, 2022, defendants sent plaintiffs a meet and confer email regarding deficiencies in their responses to defendants' RFPs and interrogatories. Wegner Decl. ¶ 6, Ex. E. Plaintiffs acknowledged receipt of the email, but did not send any further responses or documents. Wegner Decl. ¶ 6. Defendants followed up on December 2, 2022 but received no response. Wegner Decl. ¶¶ 7-8, Ex. F.

Defendants filed the present motion on January 6, 2023, noticing it for hearing on February 7, 2023. Docket no. 54. Defendants seek an order compelling plaintiffs to provide supplemental responses to interrogatories and RFPs, and to pay $5,287 in sanctions for defendants' attorneys' fees and costs incurred in filing this motion. Wegner Decl. ¶ 9. Plaintiffs did not file a response by the original deadline of January 17, 2023.

On January 30, 3023, however, plaintiffs filed an ex parte application to extend the discovery cutoff to March 27, 2023, and to continue the hearing on this motion to March 7, 2023, and grant plaintiffs until February 21, 2023 to oppose this motion. Docket no. 55. The court granted their application. Docket no. 58. But despite being granted additional time to oppose this motion to compel, plaintiffs still have not opposed the motion.

A. Plaintiffs Are Ordered to Respond to Defendants' Discovery Requests

*2 The court preliminarily notes that defendants failed to file the motion to compel in the form of a joint stipulation as required by Local Rule 37-2. But the moving party is excused from this requirement where, as here, opposing counsel failed to timely meet and confer as required by Local Rule 37-1. See L.R. 37-2.4. Thus, the court considers the motion.

Although the court has considered defendants' moving papers, the court has no opposing papers to consider. Indeed, given plaintiffs' failure to file an opposition or other response (even after being granted more time to do so), and given their failure to follow up on the first meet and confer letter, the court has no idea to what extent, if any, plaintiffs oppose the motion to compel. Plaintiffs' failure to file an opposition may be deemed consent to the granting of the motion. L.R. 7-12. The court need not simply rely on plaintiffs' lack of opposition here, however, since the motion is meritorious in any event.

As set forth above, plaintiffs responded to defendants' interrogatories and RFPs with virtually identical boilerplate objections, asserting the requests were overly broad, unreasonably cumulative, and requested information or documents already possessed or known by defendants. Because Rule 34 requires that objections be stated with specificity, boilerplate assertions of any type, including assertions of confidentiality, are improper in federal court. See, e.g., Walker v. Lakewood Condo. Owners Ass'n, 186 F.R.D. 584, 587 (C.D. Cal. 1999) (“Boilerplate, generalized objections are inadequate and tantamount to not making any objection at all.”); Duran v. Cisco Sys., Inc., 258 F.R.D. 375, 379 (C.D. Cal. 2009) (“[U]nexplained and unsupported boilerplate objections are improper.”). As such, plaintiffs' objections are overruled.

Most of the responses plaintiffs do provide (subject to the boilerplate objections) appear plainly inadequate on their face or simply inapposite to the interrogatory. For example, in response to Interrogatory No. 7 asking plaintiff Vrugtman to “[s]tate all facts which support [her] contention in SAC ... that IJL ‘lie[s] about having other members in their region [and having] multiple matches in mind,’ ” plaintiff responded that she “joined It's Just Lunch based on the matchmaker's representation that IJL had other members in the Charlottesville area.” Wegner Decl., Ex. D. This is nonresponsive; plaintiff's answer in no way addresses the basis for her contention that defendants lied. Similarly, in response to Interrogatory No. 9 asking plaintiff Kruzick to “[s]tate all facts which support [her] contentions in the SAC ... that IJL selects matches at random,” plaintiff stated “an It's Just Lunch representative provided that she ‘already had someone in mind' for Kruzick, but then never introduced Kruzick to this individual.” Id. This response again does not address the call of the question. Moreover, plaintiffs may not simply restate allegations from the SAC in response to interrogatories asking for the facts that support those allegations.

In addition, plaintiffs promised to produce documents in response to a number of RFPs, but (so far as the court knows) have yet to do so. Wegner Decl. ¶ 8, Ex. C. With the discovery cutoff fast approaching, plaintiffs' promises from June to produce documents should have been fulfilled long ago. Moreover, plaintiffs requested and received an extension of the discovery cutoff, but to the court's knowledge have not made use of that time to provide the outstanding responses.

*3 As such, the court finds plaintiffs' responses to be insufficient and orders they be promptly supplemented with substantive interrogatory responses and immediate production of responsive documents. If plaintiffs contend any of their original responses are in fact sufficient, they are directed to meet and confer with defendants about that dispute immediately.

B. Plaintiffs Are Ordered to Pay Sanctions

Defendants ask the court to order plaintiffs to pay $5,287 in sanctions to cover defendants' reasonable fees and costs incurred in filing the current motion. Rule 37(a)(5) provides that the prevailing party on a discovery motion is entitled to an award of its reasonable expenses incurred in bringing or opposing the motion, including attorney's fees, except no payment should be ordered if: (1) the motion was filed before the moving party made a good faith effort to resolve the dispute; (2) the losing party's position was substantially justified; or (3) other circumstances make award of expenses unjust. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5).

Here, defendants are the prevailing parties, and as set forth above, this motion has been entirely necessitated by plaintiffs' failure to attend to their discovery obligations. Defendants reached out to plaintiffs multiple times to resolve this matter. Plaintiffs have entirely failed to respond to those efforts and to this motion itself. Plaintiffs offer no justification for their failures, and there appears to be none. Under these circumstances, an award of expenses under Rule 37(a)(5) is entirely justified.

Defendants' counsel declares the attorneys' fees and costs expended on this matter amount to $5,287. Wegner Decl. ¶ 9. Although this amount does not appear unreasonable on its face given the number of requests at issue, the court cannot adequately evaluate it without more information regarding how many hours were expended by each attorney, the billing rate, and what costs were incurred. Accordingly, the court will order plaintiffs to pay sanctions, but directs defendants to first file a supplemental declaration with any records of the fees and costs incurred on this motion.

Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that defendants' motion to compel (docket no. 54) is granted as set forth above. Plaintiffs are each ordered to provide supplemental responses without objections to defendants' RFPs and interrogatories, and to produce all documents in their possession, custody, or control responsive to those RFPs by March 16, 2023.

The court warns plaintiffs that further failure to comply with their discovery obligations as ordered herein may result in further sanctions, which could include monetary sanctions, evidentiary sanctions, and/or terminating sanctions.