Question 1

How long do I have to file a motion to compel after a bad response?

Accepted Answer

It depends entirely on the state, and the two possible answers are very far apart. In most states there is no deadline in the rule at all. The practical limits are the court's scheduling order, the discovery cutoff, and a judge's patience with a dispute raised long after the fact, but none of those is a rule-based bar. A minority of states do set a window, measured in days from the service of the response you are complaining about, and in at least one of them the window is treated as jurisdictional: let it pass and the right to compel a further response is waived outright, not merely brought late. That is a difference in kind rather than degree, because in a no-deadline state a delay costs you credibility while in a waiver state it costs you the motion. Settle which kind of state you are in before you do anything else, and if there is a window, diary it from the date of service rather than the date you read the response.

Question 2

Do I have to contact the other side before I file, or can I go straight to the judge?

Accepted Answer

Almost never straight to the judge. The federal rule requires the motion itself to include a certification that you conferred in good faith, or tried to, before filing, and most states carry some version of that. What differs is how much work the requirement does. In many states it is satisfied by a paragraph in the motion describing your letter and the lack of reply. In others the rule requires a conference to actually happen, with a certificate whose contents the rule specifies, and says the court will not entertain the motion without it. A few route the dispute through a discovery commissioner, a discovery master or an informal conference with the judge before a motion is allowed at all. Whichever applies, do the attempt in writing and keep it. The record of what you asked for, when, and what came back is both the certification's evidence and, if you end up seeking costs, the proof that the other side made the motion necessary.

Question 3

They answered, but the answers are vague and dodge the question. Can I still move to compel?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is the most common version of the motion rather than an edge case. Most states took the federal provision that an evasive or incomplete answer must be treated as a failure to answer, which puts a response that arrived on time and says nothing in the same position as no response. What makes these motions succeed is specificity. Do not tell the court the answers are inadequate in general. Take the disputed requests one at a time, quote what you asked, quote the whole of what came back, and say in a sentence what is missing from it: a date not given, a document category not addressed, a question answered as to one defendant and not the other, a response that refers you to a document production that does not contain the answer. An objection followed by an answer given subject to the objection is its own problem worth raising expressly, because it leaves you unable to tell whether anything was withheld.

Question 4

Who pays for the motion if I win?

Accepted Answer

In a majority of states the rule says the losing side pays the winner's reasonable expenses of the motion, including attorney's fees, and the court must order it rather than merely being allowed to. The exceptions written into the federal version, which many states copied, are that the movant filed before genuinely trying to resolve it, that the opposing position was substantially justified, or that other circumstances make the award unjust. Substantial justification does real work: a losing objection that was arguable usually escapes. But this is one of the sharpest divergences between states. Some make the award discretionary, so you can win the order and get nothing. Some have no fee provision attached to the motion at all, leaving costs to a separate sanctions rule on different terms. And some impose the sanction on whichever side loses, which means an unsuccessful motion costs you the other side's fees. Check your state's wording, and in particular its verb, before deciding the motion is free to try.

Question 5

The other side objected to everything instead of answering. Is that enough to stop me?

Accepted Answer

No. An objection is a position to be tested, not an answer, and testing it is what this motion is for. The burden normally lands on the party resisting discovery to justify the objection, so a blanket recital that a request is overbroad, unduly burdensome and seeks irrelevant material, without explaining why as to that request, is weak. Boilerplate repeated identically against every request is weaker still, and in some states a general objection that is not specific to a request is treated as no objection at all. Two things are worth doing before you file. Ask whether anything is actually being withheld under the objection, because an objection that withholds nothing is not worth a motion. And consider whether the request can be narrowed, since a court that thinks you overreached may deny the motion with costs even though the objection was poor. A genuine privilege claim is different in kind and usually has to be substantiated item by item rather than asserted.

Question 6

What actually happens after the court grants the order?

Accepted Answer

The order sets a date by which the discovery must be provided, and that date is what gives the motion its force. The granted motion is not itself a punishment: it is the step that creates an order capable of being disobeyed. If the deadline passes with nothing provided, you are no longer bringing a motion to compel but a motion for sanctions for breach of an order, which is a different and much more serious application, and the remedies available there go well beyond costs to striking claims or defences, excluding evidence, deeming facts established and in extreme cases dismissal or default. That escalation is why a well-drafted order matters. Ask for a specific date rather than a reasonable time, identify exactly what has to be produced or answered, and say what form it has to take. A vague order is hard to enforce and hands the other side an argument that it complied.

Question 7

Can I file this myself without a lawyer?

Accepted Answer

Procedurally yes in most courts, and self-represented parties do file these. The difficulty is that the motion is unusually easy to lose on process rather than substance, and the process is exactly the part that varies by state. The ways it goes wrong are mechanical: filed before the response period had run, filed after a jurisdictional window closed, filed without the certification the rule requires, filed without the separate itemized statement a handful of states insist on, noticed for a hearing without the notice period the local rules set, or filed in the wrong court where the discovery was directed at a non-party. None of those reaches the merits. Read your state's rule and your court's local rules together, because the rule gives you the right and the local rules often set the format and the timing. Attorney review is available as an option, and it is worth most on the exposure question, because in states where the sanction runs against whichever side loses, a weak motion is not a free attempt.

Question 8

They never responded at all. Is that the same motion?

Accepted Answer

Often not, and the distinction matters more than it looks. Several states separate a total failure to respond from an inadequate response, and give them different provisions, different prerequisites and sometimes different deadlines. The total-failure route is usually the easier one: no window to miss, no itemized statement, and in some states a stronger consequence, because a party who simply does not respond may be treated as having waived its objections, including objections it would otherwise have been entitled to make. There is also a trap worth checking. In states that require responses to be verified or signed in a particular way, an unverified response can count as no response at all, which moves you from the harder route to the easier one. So establish three things before drafting: that service of your discovery was proper, that the response period has genuinely run, and whether anything at all came back. One device is worth checking separately: in a large number of states requests for admission are left out of the motion to compel altogether and routed instead to a motion about the sufficiency of the answers, or to a motion to have the matters deemed admitted, and in a few an unanswered request is admitted automatically with nothing to file at all. That is a difference in remedy rather than in procedure, so read your state's page before preparing the wrong paper. Those three answers decide which motion you are filing.

Motion to Compel

Find out where you stand — what state are you in?

Introduction

Key Things to Know

Key Decisions

The Discovery You Served

Interrogatories, meaning written questions

Requests for production of documents

Requests for admission

Questions at a deposition the witness would not answer

More than one of these

What Went Wrong

Nothing at all, and nothing since

A response that answers around the question

Objections, with little or nothing produced

A promise to respond that was never kept

A response that is not signed or verified the way the rules require

Before You File

Yes, and I can state the service date and the computation

The deadline passed but I am not sure of the exact date

I granted an extension and am not sure what it changed

Not yet, or I am not sure

Yes, in writing, identifying what was wrong with each response

Yes, but only in a general way

Only by telephone

Not yet

Motion to Compel Requirements

The Court, the Case Number and the Caption Your Court Uses

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Frequently Asked Questions