On March 14, 2022 the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) sued Johnson Controls, Inc. and Tyco Fire Products, Ltd (“JCI/Tyco”) for violations of the Wisconsin spills law in Marinette Country Circuit Court. On April 4, 2022, JCI/Tyco filed a complex discovery including 50 requests for production (“RFP”) of documents and information regarding the department’s regulatory activities relating to JCI/Tyco and the contaminants of concern in the litigation (provided as Exhibit 1). While the RFP required a response within 30 days, there are on-going negotiations to determine a “reasonable” production schedule. To date, the State of Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources (“Department”) has determined that this set of RFPs will likely impact approximately 160 staff members (“Custodians”) and will involve the searching each piece of computer hardware used by the Custodians, most of the Department’s file servers, SharePoint sites, and Oracle databases. The Department has developed a plan to conduct these searches in a defensible and consistent manner (the “RFP Response Plan”). The RFP Response Plan outlines collection, processing, searching and delivery of responsive data to the DOJ. On July 13, JCI/Tyco’ attorneys sent a letter to DOJ demanding an initial limited response to their RFP by August 10 (provided as Exhibit 2). JCI/Tyco demanded RFP responses from a list of 17 DNR staff members. DOJ responded on July 15 stating that the State would fulfill the limited response by September 9 (the “Initial Response”). The Department is seeking to retain a suitably qualified contractor (“Contractor”) to support the Department in implementing the e-Discovery and eForensics components of the RFP Response Plan. The Contractor will provide support to complete the Initial Response in accordance with the RFP Response Plan. The Contractor will then support the Department in implementing the remainder of the RFP Response Plan following the schedule for production agreed to by the DOJ. The department expects the discovery process could run for 2 years, although the rate of progress for this litigation is difficult to predict. The Department might modify the scope of work in order to meet budgetary constraints.

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