Morling v. The Michaels Companies, Inc.
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:23-cv-08240
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Morling v. The Michaels Companies, Inc., Judge Broderick received a discovery dispute letter; the court had not yet ruled.
The plaintiff and the defendant in Morling v. The Michaels Companies, Inc., particularly their obligations concerning document production and identification during discovery.
What happened
Morling v. The Michaels Companies, Inc. concerns a discovery dispute in a case involving alleged unregistered trade-dress infringement. The defendant asked the court to require the plaintiff to identify documents already produced and provide documents requested about access, copying, non-functionality, distinctiveness, and source identification.
The plaintiff’s stated positions were that the discovery rules did not require her to match documents to particular requests because she produced them as kept in the ordinary course of business, and that other requests were duplicative. The defendant disagreed and said the plaintiff had refused to identify responsive documents or produce documents for several requests.
The filing states that the court would address the dispute at a scheduled discovery conference on August 29, 2024. Judge Vernon Broderick was identified as the presiding judge, but this filing does not report a ruling on the dispute.
The detailed version
- Morling v. The Michaels Companies, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-08240
- Vernon Broderick
- Aug. 14, 2024
Nature of the Filing
This document is a letter from the defendant’s counsel requesting a discovery conference. It describes disagreements over the plaintiff’s responses to the defendant’s first requests for production of documents. The court’s endorsement states that it would address the letter at the previously scheduled discovery conference on August 29, 2024. The document does not state a ruling on the discovery requests.
Parties’ Positions
The defendant’s letter says the plaintiff refused to correlate documents to Requests for Production (RFPs) 34, 35, 40, and 43. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 34 requires a party either to produce documents as they are kept in the usual course of business or to organize and label them so they correspond to the categories in the request. The defendant argued that the plaintiff had not shown how the documents were organized and had not identified which documents responded to particular requests.
The letter also says the plaintiff refused to produce documents responsive to RFPs 42, 45, 46, and 47. The defendant characterized RFPs 42 and 45 as seeking evidence of the distinctiveness of the combination of elements claimed as trade dress. It characterized RFPs 46 and 47 as seeking evidence that the claimed trade dress identified the source of the plaintiff’s sculptures. The defendant argued that these requests concerned elements of the plaintiff’s unregistered trade-dress claims and were not duplicative of other requests.
The plaintiff’s stated positions, as reported in the letter, were that Rule 34 did not require document-by-document correlation because the documents had been produced as kept in the ordinary course of business, and that the disputed requests duplicated RFPs 60, 62 through 65, and 67. The letter also states that the plaintiff initially objected to some requests based on a local rule governing interrogatories, later answered the referenced interrogatory, and still did not provide the documents or identify documents already produced.
Procedural Status and Disposition
The document reports no grant, denial, dismissal, or other ruling. It records the court’s direction that the dispute would be addressed at a later discovery conference. Judge Vernon Broderick is identified in the supplied case information as the judge, while the endorsement in the filing is from United States Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.