Wills v. City of Monterey

Background

Cynthia S Wills, who is representing herself, asserts an Eighth Amendment claim against the City of Monterey. The deadline for completing fact discovery was August 29, 2024.

Discovery dispute

The City argued in an August 2, 2024 letter brief that discovery from the City should be limited because of the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. The opinion states that whether that decision forecloses or affects the scope of Wills’s Eighth Amendment claim was before Judge Chen on a pending motion for judgment on the pleadings, scheduled for a September 12, 2024 hearing.

Ruling

The court stated that the effect of City of Grants Pass was for Judge Chen to decide on the pending motion. Unless Judge Chen altered the discovery deadline or dismissed Wills’s claim, the court would proceed on the assumption, for purposes of evaluating the discovery dispute, that the City’s motion for judgment on the pleadings would be denied. The court therefore required discovery to be completed by the existing deadline.

If the City wanted relief from discovery, it was required to file a motion before Judge Chen seeking either a stay of discovery while the motion for judgment on the pleadings was pending or an extension of the fact-discovery deadline. The City was also required to file that motion in time for a decision before the discovery cutoff, which could require a request to shorten the briefing schedule.

The order further required the City to notify Wills by telephone by August 6, 2024, about the order and its intended course of action. The City also had to notify her by telephone on the same day if it filed a motion in response. The order did not decide the effect of City of Grants Pass on Wills’s Eighth Amendment claim or the pending motion for judgment on the pleadings.