A new Federal Trade Commission lawsuit could suggest trouble ahead for companies that push back against the agency’s hefty document-production demands, sometimes for probes in which they’re not even a target.

Last week, the agency took the unusual step of suing one of those nontargets, the 257-store liquor chain Total Wine & More, saying its response to an administrative subpoena it received in February 2023 is “severely deficient in multiple respects.”