| Response Personnel, Inc. v Aschenbrenner |
| 2010 NY Slip Op 07487 [77 AD3d 518] |
| October 21, 2010 |
| Appellate Division, First Department |
| Response Personnel, Inc., Appellant, v Erik Aschenbrenner etal., Respondents. |
—[*1] Kaplan Belsky Ross Bartell, L.L.P., Garden City (Lewis A. Bartell of counsel), forrespondents.
Resettled order, Supreme Court, New York County (Eileen Bransten, J.), entered January 6,2010, which, to the extent appealed from, denied plaintiff's motion for a protective order denyingdefendants' request for the production of tax returns and other documents and directed plaintiff toproduce, at its own expense, the requested discovery in the form of electronic documents, unanimouslymodified, on the law, to delete the direction to plaintiff to fund the discovery at its own expense, andotherwise affirmed, without costs.
The court properly denied plaintiff's motion for a protective order, since plaintiff failed to show thatthere was anything unreasonable or improper about defendants' demands for its tax returns (seePyfrom v Tishman Constr. Co. of N.Y., 270 AD2d 24 [2000]; Gitlin v Chirinkin, 71 AD3d 728[2010]).
Under these circumstances, directing plaintiff to produce documents in electronic form may be anappropriate response to defendants' argument that they have insufficient office space in which to reviewvoluminous papers, but requiring plaintiff to bear the cost of the production imposes an undue burdenon it, since, generally, the cost of production is borne by the party requesting the production, and thecost of creating electronic documents here would not have been inconsequential (see Waltzer v Tradescape & Co., L.L.C.,31 AD3d 302, 304 [2006]). Concur—Sweeny, J.P., Freedman, Richter,Manzanet-Daniels and RomÁn, JJ.