in Re UPS Ground Freight, Inc., 646 S.W.3d 828

Background

On Sept. 21, 2017, a UPS driver (Phillip Villarreal) dispatched from UPS’s Irving, TX facility was involved in a fatal multi-vehicle collision; Villarreal’s post-accident drug test was positive for THC.
Nathan Clark’s mother, Jacintha McElduff, sued Villarreal and UPS for negligence, negligent retention/entrustment/training, and gross negligence, alleging UPS failed to properly test and police drivers.
UPS produced Villarreal’s drug- and alcohol-test records and information about its nationwide, third-party administered testing program; Villarreal admitted personal marijuana use and limited random testing in deposition.
McElduff served broad discovery seeking names/contact info and all alcohol/drug test records (pre-employment, random, reasonable-suspicion, periodic, post-accident) for all drivers dispatched from the Irving facility over long time periods (initially 11 years, then narrowed by the trial court).
The trial court compelled production; the appellate court granted mandamus relief in part (imposing 5/2/1-year limits and requiring redaction of identities) but the trial court again ordered production subject to those limits; the Texas Supreme Court reviewed on mandamus.
The Supreme Court held the compelled production remained overbroad and irrelevant as to nonparty, uninvolved drivers, and conditionally granted mandamus to prohibit disclosure of their confidential test records.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether drug/alcohol test results of nonparty, uninvolved UPS drivers are discoverable	Test results show a pattern or practice of failing to properly test/supervise and compliance with federal rules	Overbroad and irrelevant to the single-incident claims; invasion of nonparty privacy; federal protections	Not discoverable; records for uninvolved nonparty drivers are irrelevant and order compelling them was an abuse of discretion
Whether facility-specific test results are probative of UPS’s national testing-program compliance	Facility results would tend to show company-wide failures and regulatory noncompliance	Irving-facility results are only a small slice of a national program and do not establish national noncompliance	Facility-level individual test results do not reliably show national program noncompliance and lack sufficient relevance
Whether time and redaction limits imposed by appellate court cured overbreadth	Narrowing to 5/2/1 years and redaction makes production appropriate	Even narrowed, the request still seeks confidential, irrelevant information about many uninvolved drivers	Time limits and redaction did not eliminate overbreadth; compelled disclosure still improper
Whether mandamus is appropriate remedy	N/A (plaintiff opposed)	Mandamus is appropriate because an order compelling overly broad discovery is an abuse of discretion and appeal is inadequate	Mandamus conditionally granted; trial court directed to vacate order compelling nonparty drug/alcohol test records

Key Cases Cited

In re Deere & Co., 299 S.W.3d 819 (Tex. 2009) (mandamus proper for relief from overly broad discovery orders)
In re K&L Auto Crushers, LLC, 627 S.W.3d 239 (Tex. 2021) (overbroad discovery seeks irrelevant information)
In re Alford Chevrolet-Geo, 997 S.W.2d 173 (Tex. 1999) (requests exceeding issues in the case are overbroad)
In re Nat'l Lloyds Ins., 507 S.W.3d 219 (Tex. 2016) (limits on subject-matter discovery despite broad construction of relevance)
In re Am. Optical Corp., 988 S.W.2d 711 (Tex. 1998) (discovery may not be used as a fishing expedition)
In re CSX Corp., 124 S.W.3d 149 (Tex. 2003) (requests must be reasonably tailored to avoid tenuous information)
Texaco, Inc. v. Sanderson, 898 S.W.2d 813 (Tex. 1995) (discovery should be reasonably tailored to matters relevant to the case)