In Bellinger v. Astrue, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71727 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 14, 2009), U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Gold denied plaintiff's request for additional discovery finding the burden and expense of further discovery outweighed its potential benefit.

This case involved an employment discrimination action related to plaintiff's denial of a promotion.   In discovery, plaintiff sought the identity of every person, including their sex, race and age who held a temporary position with defendant's office for a period going back 10 years.  Plaintiff also requested the identify of every location "including computers, network servers, hard drives, mainframes, storage media, back up tapes, disks, and every other type of storage medium" where e-mails and attachments of certain custodians were stored for a 10-year period.  Plaintiff further requested detailed information related to defendant's litigation hold policies and procedures and search for electronic information.

The court noted that plaintiff had already obtained substantial discovery, including more than 10,000 pages of documents over the course of two years of litigation.  Defendant had also searched and produced electronically stored information from custodians, including relevant e-mails sent or received by three of plaintiff's co-workers over a three-year period. The court, citing FRCP 26(b)(2)(C), ruled that the burden and expense of further discovery outweighed its likely benefit. The court, citing several cases, ruled that plaintiff has no right to limitless discovery of defendant's entire work force, and that the courts must impose reasonable limits on the scope of permissible discovery based on the specific facts of a particular case.