Waskul v. Washtenaw County Community Mental Health

Four severely developmentally disabled adults, including Derek Waskul, together with the Washtenaw Association for Community Advocacy (collectively, Waskul) (plaintiffs) sued Washtenaw County Community Mental Health (WCCMH) (defendant), alleging that its modified budgeting methodology deprived Waskul and similarly situated individuals of medically necessary community living support services, in violation of federal and state law. During discovery, Waskul served several requests for production (RFPs), including RFP 39 seeking documents about budgeting and reimbursement of community living support services from several custodians. The parties agreed on certain search terms, and Waskul asked WCCMH to run five test searches on its email network. Only one test produced results within the expected range. Waskul proposed including the successful terms in RFP 39 and requested that WCCMH produce 80 randomly selected emails—20 from each failed test—to confirm search accuracy and identify missing materials. WCCMH refused to produce the test emails, test other search terms, or set a production deadline, citing staffing shortages, budget limits, and its reliance on a single employee with access to the email system. Waskul countered that WCCMH had a $9 million annual budget, used the county’s email system, and had access to cost-effective e-discovery tools. Waskul also contended that WCCMH’s counsel lacked e-discovery competence, citing counsel’s failure to interview custodians, improper reliance on Waskul to design search protocols, and objections to the term “custodian.”