Background
When Arkansas first adopted its Rules of Civil Procedure in 1979, Rule 26 was modeled on the federal rules as they existed at that time. In the decades since, the federal discovery rules have undergone significant revisions—most notably the 2015 amendments that added a proportionality requirement to the scope of discovery and eliminated the “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” standard that had come to be treated by many litigants as a near-unlimited license to seek discovery.
Arkansas’s discovery rules had not kept pace with these developments. The Arkansas Supreme Court’s Committee on Civil Practice undertook a comprehensive review and recommended sweeping changes to Rules 11, 26, 33, 34, and 36 of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure. After a public comment period, the Supreme Court adopted all of the Committee’s recommendations in this per curiam order, effective immediately.
The amendments represent the most significant overhaul of Arkansas discovery practice in decades, touching the scope of discovery, protective orders, privilege log requirements, discovery certification standards, and the specificity required for objections to interrogatories, production requests, and requests for admission.
The Court’s Holding
The Court adopted six major categories of changes. First, Rule 26(b)(1) now incorporates a proportionality requirement modeled on Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Discovery must be “relevant to the issues in the pending action” and “proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.” Critically, the amendment eliminates the phrase “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” which the Committee found could be construed to extend discovery beyond relevance.
Second, new Rule 11(d) exempts discovery disclosures, requests, responses, and objections from Rule 11’s general certification requirements. In their place, new Rule 26(g) creates discovery-specific certification standards with its own sanctions framework. Notably, Arkansas’s Rule 11(d) differs from its federal counterpart by omitting “motions” from the exclusion—meaning discovery motions remain subject to Rule 11, filling a gap that exists in the federal rules.
Third, Rules 33(b)(4), 34(b)(2), and 36(a) now require that objections be stated with particularity. Blanket objections to a set of interrogatories, production requests, or requests for admission “will not be recognized.” It is no longer sufficient to state merely that a request is “not relevant or proportional or is otherwise improper.” For production requests, an objection must also state whether responsive materials are being withheld on the basis of the objection.
Key Takeaways
- Arkansas discovery now has a proportionality requirement—parties must weigh the burden and expense of proposed discovery against the needs of the case, the amount in controversy, and the relative resources of the parties.
- Boilerplate and blanket objections are explicitly prohibited across interrogatories, production requests, and requests for admission. Practitioners must state their grounds with particularity or risk waiver.
- New Rule 26(g) creates a discovery-specific certification requirement with sanctions authority, replacing Rule 11 for discovery documents while keeping discovery motions under Rule 11.
- New Rule 26(f)(1) requires parties claiming privilege to describe withheld materials in enough detail to allow opposing parties to assess the claim—effectively codifying privilege-log practice in Arkansas.
Why It Matters
These amendments fundamentally reshape how Arkansas litigators will conduct discovery. The proportionality standard gives courts a tool to rein in disproportionate discovery requests without resorting to the protective-order mechanism, and it shifts the burden calculus—a requesting party must now consider whether the discovery it seeks is proportional, not merely relevant. For defendants in smaller cases who have long borne the expense of overly broad discovery, this is a significant development.
Equally important is the elimination of blanket objections. Arkansas practitioners who have relied on boilerplate objection language must immediately revise their form files. Under the amended rules, a failure to state specific grounds for an objection constitutes a waiver unless excused by the court for good cause. Litigators should also prepare for the new privilege-log requirements of Rule 26(f)(1), which will require more detailed documentation of privilege claims than many Arkansas practitioners have been accustomed to providing.