A.B. et al v. Jacobs Solutions Inc. et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
Civil Action No. 23-cv-02660-RMR-CYC
F.C., A.B., D.D.R., L.V., Ra.G, R.S., J.D.C.,
W.C., G.G., R.C., D.L., E.I., M.G., E.C., Rh.P.,
L.L., J.J.G., R.V., R.L., A.S., E.A., J.V., A.C.,
A.G., A.A., R.A., Ro.L., Ro.P., S.N., B.M., G.T.,
J.B., E.D.C., V.A., Re.D., C.S., Ra.D., M.R., I.E.,
M.A., Ro.D., A.D., Ri.D., Rod.O., M.D.L., Ri.O.,
En.C., Ron.O., G.S., B.D., C.C., and N.C.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
JACOBS SOLUTIONS INC.,
JACOBS ENGINEERING GROUP INC.,
CH2M HILL COMPANIES, LTD.,
CH2M HILL INTERNATIONAL, LTD., and
CH2M HILL INTERNATIONAL B.V.,
Defendants.
______________________________________________________________________________
ORDER
______________________________________________________________________________
Cyrus Y. Chung, United States Magistrate Judge.
Through Defendants’ Motion to Amend Scheduling Order, ECF No. 114, the defendants
ask the Court to amend the Scheduling Order to allow them two additional requests for
production. ECF No. 114. This motion follows the Court’s January 22, 2026 Minute Order that
denied the defendants’ motion to compel responses to these two requests, as well as others,
because they exceeded the limit set in the Scheduling Order. ECF No. 112. As the Court noted:
“[t]o the extent the defendants believe good cause exists to alter the scheduling order, that should
be shown by a motion to alter the scheduling order, and the Court does not decide whether good
cause exists here based on the discovery letters.” Id.
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The defendants now raise the issue of good cause. ECF No. 114 at 2. They point to a
District of Utah case for the proposition that the Court should apply Smith v. United States, 834
F.2d 166, 169 (10th Cir. 1987), to the question at hand. ECF No. 114 at 5. That is the wrong test.
Smith applies to a request to reopen discovery. See, e.g., Morrison v. Safeco Ins. Co. of Am., No.
23-cv-00360-SKC-CYC, 2025 WL 2696590, at *1–2 (D. Colo. Sept. 22, 2025), aff’d, 2025 WL
3250865 (D. Colo. Nov. 21, 2025); Kearns v. Maul, No. 23-cv-01452-CYC, 2025 WL 1684953,
at *1 (D. Colo. June 16, 2025). The defendants ask to amend the Scheduling Order to expand the
number of requests for production, not to reopen discovery after it has closed.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b)(4) governs such requests, requiring that
modifications be supported by “good cause.” To show good cause, a movant must demonstrate
that “the scheduling deadlines [or limitations] cannot be met despite the movant’s diligent
efforts.” Seale v. Peacock, 32 F.4th 1011, 1030 (10th Cir. 2022) (quotation marks omitted). The
movant’s identification of “[n]ewly-obtained information, if it was truly unknown and
unavailable,” can constitute good cause to amend a Scheduling Order. Gale v. City & Cnty. of
Denver, 962 F.3d 1189, 1195 (10th Cir. 2020) (quotation marks omitted). On the other hand,
“‘[i]ndifference by the moving party seals off this avenue of relief irrespective of prejudice
because such conduct is incompatible with the showing of diligence necessary to establish good
cause.’” Pinto-Rios v. Brown, No. 20-cv-03698-RMR-SKC, 2023 WL 129692, at *2 (D. Colo.
Jan. 9, 2023) (quoting O’Connell v. Hyatt Hotels of P.R., 357 F.3d 152, 155 (1st Cir. 2004)).
“And, of course, the general requirement that the desired evidence be relevant under Fed. R.
Evid. 401 and 403 informs any request to amend a Scheduling Order to seek additional
discovery.” Garcia v. Gardner, No. 20-cv-00278-DDD-GPG, 2022 WL 22864405, at *2 (D.
Colo. Dec. 12, 2022).
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The Amended Scheduling Order allowed each side to serve up to twenty-five requests for
production. ECF No. 75 at 8. On August 15, 2025, the defendants served twenty-five requests for
production on the plaintiffs. ECF No. 114-2 at 8. The defendants maintain that they “acted
diligently to obtain discovery within the bounds of the original Scheduling Order” because they
served these requests and “when Plaintiff produced only minimal documents in response, [they]
propounded additional targeted requests and interrogatories necessitated by the dearth of
evidence Plaintiffs have produced to support their forced labor claims.” ECF No. 114 at 6. But
the remedy to inadequate discovery responses is a request to compel production, see Fed. R. Civ.
P. 37(a), not assuming that additional requests that exceed the Scheduling Order’s limits are
allowed. Second, the defendants construe diligence as seeking discovery within the time
constraints of the Scheduling Order, but time is not the issue here; the number of discovery
requests is. “The focus of the [good-cause] inquiry is upon the movant’s diligence with respect to
the issue underpinning the modification request.” McCormick v. HRM Res., LLC, 348 F.R.D.
686, 688 (D. Colo. 2025). The question, then, is the defendants’ diligence in seeking relevant
discovery within the twenty-five requests for production allowed by the Scheduling Order.
There, the defendants fall short. They maintain that recent revelations that the plaintiffs
plan to rely on 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(2) support a finding of diligence. ECF No. 114 at 7. But both
the original complaint and the amended complaint include 18 U.S.C. § 1589 claims, including an
explicit allegation that the plaintiffs believed “that if they did not work they would be subjected
to serious harm.” ECF No. 1 ¶ 180; ECF No. 52 ¶ 204. That should have alerted the defendants
that the plaintiffs intended to implicate 18 U.S.C. § 1589(a)(2)’s prohibition of procuring labor
“by means of serious harm or threats of serious harm.”
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Moreover, the plaintiffs say that the defendants wasted some of the twenty-five requests
for production by asking for nonexistent information and making duplicative requests, ECF No.
120 at 5–6, and the defendants never rebut that contention. Failing to do so ignores the crux of
the issue at hand. As the moving parties, the defendants must demonstrate that despite their
diligence, they could not obtain needed discovery within the Scheduling Order’s twenty-five
request limitation. Seale, 32 F.4th at 1030; McCormick, 348 F.R.D. at 688. They do not do so. As
a result, the defendants have not shown good cause to amend the Scheduling Order to expand the
number of requests for production. See Demmer v. Fitzgibbons, No. 11-cv-01802-CMA-KMT,
2012 WL 872666, at *3 (D. Colo. Mar. 14, 2012).
For the foregoing reasons, it is hereby ORDERED that the Defendants’ Motion to Amend
Scheduling Order, ECF No. 114, is DENIED.
DATED this 4th day of March, 2026, at Denver, Colorado.
BY THE COURT:
____________________________________
Cyrus Y. Chung
United States Magistrate Judge
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