*1 Pending before the Court is plaintiffs’ motion to compel defendants’ production of documents in response to RFPs 3 and 5. [44].[1] The motion is fully briefed [49, 53].[2] For the following reasons, the motion is granted as to RFP 3. Defendants’ opposed motion for leave to strike plaintiffs’ reply or for leave to file a sur-reply [54] is denied.

“In ruling on a motion to compel, the discovery standard set forth in Rule 26(b) applies.” Mendez v. City of Chicago, 18-cv-6313, 2020 WL 4736399, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 14, 2020). Rule 26 “governs the scope of civil discovery and allows parties to obtain discovery regarding any matter that is: (1) nonprivileged; (2) relevant to any party's claim or defense; and (3) proportional to the needs of the case.” Barnes-Staples v. Murphy, Case No. 20-cv-3627, 2021 WL 1426875, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 15, 2021). “The party requesting discovery bears the initial burden to establish its relevancy.” Mendez, 2020 WL 4736399, at *3. “If the discovery appears relevant, the party objecting to the discovery request bears the burden of showing why that request is improper.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

This is a putative class-action case in which plaintiffs allege that defendants sold Kenmore-branded refrigerators that came with a ten-year warranty guaranteeing the performance of the refrigerators’ linear compressors, a cooling component that was designed by third party LG Electronics. Plaintiffs contend the linear compressors have a defect that causes them to stop cooling long before the ten-year warranty period expires. [44] 7. Plaintiffs’ RFP 3 asks for production of “[a]ll Documents,” dating from March 2, 2013 to the filing of the complaint on March 2, 2023 [1], “discussing Refrigerators that do not cool properly or other problems with the Linear Compressors (including how to fix such problems).” [44-2] 3. Plaintiffs assert that defendants have produced only certain customer service records in response to RFP 3, but have refused to produce a large swathe of other documents, such as emails, memoranda, and presentations, that are responsive to the request. [53] 4. Defendants argue that RFP 3 is overbroad, violates Rule 34's particularity requirement, and is unduly burdensome and disproportionate to the needs of the case to the extent it seeks documents dating to 2013. [49] 8-9, 11-16.

*2 Having considered the parties’ arguments, and in the exercise of its “extremely broad discretion in controlling discovery,” Jones v. City of Elkhart, 737 F.3d 1107, 1115 (7th Cir. 2013), the Court grants plaintiffs’ motion.

First, although defendants do not appear to dispute the general relevance of the category of documents at issue in RFP 3, the Court finds that RFP 3 seeks relevant information about the alleged design defect that is at the heart of plaintiffs’ case. As plaintiffs argue, documents in defendants’ possession, custody, or control that discuss the linear compressor, any of its alleged defects, or any cooling problems that the compressor caused would be relevant to show the existence (or non-existence) of the defect and defendants’ knowledge (if any) that a defective product was being sold. See In re ZF-ARW Airbag Cntrl., Case No. ML 19-2905-JAK, 2022 WL 19425956, at *6 (C.D. Cal. Jul. 25, 2022) (compelling production of internal reports that had “bearing on important issues, such as confirming the existence of the [alleged] defect” and “establishing when defendants learned of the defect”).

Second, defendants have not demonstrated that RFP 3's request for relevant documents is nonetheless improper. See Mendez, 2020 WL 4736399, at *3. Defendants contend that the request is overbroad because it seeks “information about all compressor issues and all cooling issues, even those having nothing to do with linear compressors” and thus exceeds the scope of plaintiffs’ claims. [49] 12 (emphasis in original). But RFP 3 contains defined terms that reasonably limit the request to subject matter that is relevant to plaintiffs’ allegations. The term “Refrigerators” is defined to mean only “Kenmore-branded refrigerator[s] with a Linear Compressor.” [44-2] 8, at ¶ 25. “Linear Compressor,” in turn, means “any compressor made by LG Electronics or its predecessors, successors, parents, divisions, subsidiaries, and affiliates.” [Id.] 7, at ¶ 18. The focus of the request is thus on cooling problems in Kenmore refrigerators that have an LG-manufactured linear compressor or other form of compressor. And while defendants contend that plaintiffs’ definition of “Linear Compressor” goes “well beyond the allegedly defective linear compressors” [49] 10 n.12 (emphasis in original), defendants have made no showing that plaintiffs’ request will or is likely to result in the production of documents that discuss class refrigerators with other kinds of compressors that have nothing to do with this case.

Defendants also maintain that RFP 3 is an impermissible “catch all” request about “the general subject matter of this lawsuit that fails to place [them] on reasonable notice of what is called for and what is not.” [49] 12 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court rejects this argument in light of its determination that the defined terms in RFP 3 place reasonable and discernible limits on the scope of the request. Moreover, plaintiffs have made clear to the defense during meet-and-confer efforts that RFP 3 is aimed at uncovering emails, reports, presentations, memoranda, and other responsive documents discussing the refrigerators and/or the alleged design defect. See [44-8] 3; [44-9] 7; see also [44] 10; [53] 7-8. Contrary to defendants’ position, then, see [49] 15, this is not a case where the Court would need to “re-write or right size Plaintiffs’ RFP[ ]” before the defense can understand how to respond. Finally, plaintiffs have represented that they are willing to work with defendants “in good faith ... to negotiate either search terms or a technology assisted review protocol.” [44] 10. For these reasons, the Court rejects defendants’ argument that plaintiffs need to revise RFP to identify the specific types of documents they are seeking.

*3 Nor have defendants demonstrated that the ten-year timeframe at issue in RFP 3 is unreasonable or disproportionate to the needs of the case. The amended complaint defines the proposed class as “[a]ll residents of the United States and its territories who, for household use and not for resale, bought or otherwise acquired a Class Refrigerator within 10 years from the date of the filing of this lawsuit.” [15] 26-27, at ¶ 97. Plaintiffs accordingly maintain that a ten-year timeframe for responding to RFP 3 is appropriate because March 2, 2013 is “the earliest date when a consumer could have purchased a Class Refrigerator and had an active warranty when this lawsuit was filed.” [44] 10. The Court agrees. If the proposed class includes members who purchased refrigerators as early as March 2013, then documents from March 2013 and onwards that discuss the refrigerators’ cooling problems or defects in the linear compressor are clearly relevant, as those documents may include contemporaneous complaints made by the potential class members who purchased their refrigerators at those times and show that defendants have long known of defects in the linear compressors. Defendants nevertheless contend that the ten-year timeframe is overbroad and calls for the production of irrelevant information because “these four Plaintiffs have no 10-year warranty” and thus only “hypothetical class members they seek to represent” may have purchased refrigerators with ten-year warranties. [49] 2. But this argument is contradicted by the amended complaint, which alleges that plaintiffs Cristofoletti and Nicosia each purchased a Class Refrigerator with a ten-year warranty for the linear compressor. See [15] 21, at ¶¶ 59, 82. Defendants also contend (accurately) that the earliest any of the named plaintiffs bought a Class Refrigerator was in 2016. [49] 2. But defendants do not explain what bearing this fact has on plaintiffs’ ability to represent class members who purchased Class Refrigerators earlier in the ten-year class period. More importantly, defendants have not signaled any willingness to search for and produce responsive documents dating to this plaintiff's purchase of a refrigerator in 2016. And while defendants’ opposition brief repeatedly refers to plaintiffs’ proposed timeframe as not proportional to the needs of the case, defendants have not offered any evidence–or even a rough estimate–of the alleged burden they will incur to substantiate that claim.[3] In cases like this one, “in which the non-moving party argues that the burden or expense of production outweighs the likely benefit of the discovery ... only the non-moving party knows what that burden or expense will be, and therefore the non-moving party must provide that information to the Court in order to support its proportionality argument.” Manassa v. Nat'l Collegiate Athletic Ass'n, No. 1:20-cv-3172-RLY-MJD, 2023 WL 1765993, at *5 (S.D. Ind. Feb. 3, 2023); see also Human Rts. Def. Ctr., Case No. 18 C 1136, 2022 WL 4386666, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 22, 2022) (rejecting defense's proportionality objection because “Defendants do not offer any specifics or even an estimate of the burden involved in producing discovery related to the unnamed facilities, nor is there an affidavit or declaration explaining the burden”). Defendants have thus failed to substantiate their undue-burden and proportionality objections.

Third, the Court rejects defendants’ argument that the temporal scope of RFP 3 should be limited because defendants cannot, as a matter of law, be liable for any conduct predating the 2019 execution of an Asset Purchase Agreement (APA). [49] 2-3, 9-10. As defendants explain, the “Transform entities are Delaware corporations created to buy the surviving assets of Sears Holding Company, including the Kenmore Appliance brand.” [Id.] 4. The Transform entities “did not exist until January 2019,” and the next month “the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York entered the Sale Order ... approving the APA between Transform and Sears.” [Id.]. Defendants maintain that the APA and Sale Order preclude plaintiffs from pursuing both direct- and successor-liability claims against them, and this issue is the subject of a motion to dismiss that is pending before the District Judge. Defendants contend that, “if the Court agrees with Transform's argument, then any evidence ... predating the APA would be irrelevant to this case and beyond the scope of proper discovery.” [Id.] 5. The Court declines to limit the scope of otherwise relevant and proportional discovery based on the possibility that the District Judge may accept defendants’ arguments about the effect of the APA on the viability of plaintiffs’ claims. The filing of a Rule 12 motion to dismiss does not ordinarily justify a stay of discovery, see New England Carpenters Health & Welfare Fund v. Abbott Labs., No. 12 C 1662, 2013 WL 690613, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 20, 2013), and defendants have not sought or obtained a stay from Judge Kness. The Court therefore declines to consider those arguments as grounds for limiting the temporal scope of RFP 3, and defendants must respond to RFP 3 notwithstanding their pending motion to dismiss.

The parties dispute how much time defendants should be given to comply with this Order. In their motion to compel, plaintiffs indicated that they would work with defendants to negotiate search terms or a technology-assisted review protocol and asked the Court to set a ten-day timetable for conferring on this issue. [44] 10. In their reply, however, plaintiffs ask the Court to order that defendant complete its responsive production within 30 days after the resolution of this discovery dispute. [53] 6. The latter proposal prompted defendants’ motion to strike the request for a 30-day production deadline or, alternatively, for leave to file a sur-reply further addressing that issue. [54]. In the exercise of its discretion, the Court declines to receive further briefing on this issue, denies defendants’ motion, and sets the following schedule for compliance with this Order: the parties must complete their conferral on all pertinent matters relating to defendants’ search for and production of documents responsive to RFP 3 by December 29, 2023, and defendants must make their responsive production by January 31, 2024. The parties must also file a joint status report with the undersigned by January 12, 2024 to update the Court on the status of defendants’ production. In so ruling, the Court notes that defendants did not object to a ten-day conferral period if the motion to compel were granted, and the January 31, 2024 deadline requires that a production be made within a thirty-day window once the conferral process concludes. The Court adds that it routinely orders parties to comply with its rulings on discovery motions by responding to a disputed request within a 30-day period. Lastly, the unsubstantiated nature of defendants’ burden and proportionality objections, combined with the length of time this dispute has been percolating and the April 1, 2024 fact discovery cutoff set by the District Judge [40] 2, counsel against setting a later date for defendants to complete their production.

*4 Finally, plaintiffs raise a new discovery issue in their reply brief that the Court declines to address. According to plaintiffs, defendants recently disclosed the existence of a new database that holds customer complaints about Class Refrigerators and linear compressors. [53] 13. Defendants advised plaintiffs that they are investigating whether it is reasonable to produce a class-wide set of cooling complaints, but have not provided plaintiffs with a timeframe for completing this investigation. Plaintiffs therefore ask the Court to set a date certain for defendants to complete this investigation. The Court rejects plaintiffs’ request, which was raised for the first time in their reply brief and without an adequate demonstration that the parties met and conferred on this issue as required by Local Rule 37.2 but could not resolve this dispute. The Court expects that the parties will continue to meet and confer on this issue as necessary, and the parties are reminded that no motion to compel may be filed unless and until the parties have completely exhausted their meet-and-confer obligations.

Plaintiffs’ motion to compel [44] is granted as to RFP 3. The parties must complete their conferral efforts on all issues relating to defendants’ production of responsive documents by December 29, 2023, and defendants must make their responsive production by January 31, 2024. A joint status report is due before the undersigned on January 12, 2024 to update the Court on the status of defendants’ production. Defendants’ motion to strike or for leave to file a sur-reply [54] is denied.