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Rule 34.01 – Scope

May 13, 2021 | Civil Procedure, Minnesota

(a) In General. Any party may serve on any other party a request within the scope of Rule 26.02:

(1) to produce and permit the party making the request, or someone acting on the requesting party’s behalf, to inspect and copy, test, or sample:

(A) any designated documents or electronically stored information- including writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, sound recordings, images, and other data or data compilations stored in any medium from which information can be obtained-translated, if necessary by the respondent through detection devices into reasonably usable form, or
(B) to inspect and copy, test, or sample any designated tangible things that constitute or contain matters within the scope of Rule 26.02 and that are in the possession, custody or control of the party upon whom the request is served, or
(2) to permit entry upon designated land or other property in the possession or control of the party upon whom the request is served for the purpose of inspection and measuring, surveying, photographing, testing, or sampling the property or any designated object or operation thereon, within the scope of Rule 26.02.

Minn. R. Civ. P. 34.01

Amended effective July 1, 2007; Amended effective July 1, 2018.
Advisory Committee Comment-2007 Amendment
Rule 34.01is amended to make two changes. First, the rule explicitly applies to “electronically stored information” (“ESI”) as well as other forms. A more important change is to add provisions allowing the discovering party to require production of information for the purposes of testing or sampling. Testing and sampling are important tools in managing discovery, particularly discovery of ESI. Testing and sampling allow a party to inspect a small subset of requested information to determine whether it is worth conducting additional or broader discovery. These tools may be useful to the court in determining whether to allow additional discovery or discovery of information that is not reasonably accessible, as defined inRule 26.02(b)(2).

Advisory Committee Comment-2018 Amendments

Rule 34.01 is amended to incorporate the scope of discovery set forth in Rule 26.02. This change is made to make that limitation on the scope of any Ride 34 discovery obligation clear to litigants, and is not intended to expand or narrow the scope of discovery.