Much has been written about the onerousness of overly broaddiscovery requests. Now Colorado's high court is fighting backagainst excessive discovery with its ruling that trial courtsshould take a more active approach when it comes to addressing suchrequests.

The ruling came as part of breach of contract litigation betweenthe oil and gas companies DCP Midstream and Anadarko PetroleumCorp. During the discovery phase, DCP sent Anadarko 58 requests formillions of pages of documents. Anadarko refused to comply, arguingthat many of the requests were not related to the breach ofcontract claims and thus were outside the scope of discovery.

The trial court ordered Anadarko to produce the desired records,ruling that the broader request may turn up documents that wouldlater turn out to be relevant. Although the court advised theparties to cooperate and narrow the discovery request, itmaintained that it did not “have the power to make [them] dothat.”

The Colorado Supreme Court disagreed, however. In its ruling, it opined that Colorado Rule ofCivil Procedure 26(b)(1)—which is similar to its federalcounterpart—requires trial courts to “determine the appropriatescope of discovery in light of the reasonable needs of the case andtailor discovery to those needs.”

At the very least, the court said, trial courts should considerthe cost-benefit and proportionality factors laid out in therule.