Marcus Brooks v. Warnermedia Direct LLC
- Katherine Failla
- 1:23-cv-11030
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Brooks v. WarnerMedia Direct, LLC, Judge Failla ordered more discovery about arbitration assent, denied an informal conference for now, and extended briefing.
The order affected the petitioners and WarnerMedia Direct, LLC by requiring additional discovery and depositions concerning whether the petitioners agreed to WarnerMedia’s current arbitration agreement, while extending the briefing deadline.
What happened
Brooks v. WarnerMedia Direct, LLC concerns a petition to compel arbitration. WarnerMedia agreed that the underlying dispute must be arbitrated but sought arbitration before the provider named in its current agreement. The court had previously found a factual dispute about whether the petitioners agreed to that agreement.
WarnerMedia said the petitioners provided only limited declarations and refused to provide additional information or identify deposition dates unless WarnerMedia withdrew its deposition notices. The requested information included device use, access to HBO Max or Max, limited browser history, payments, and communications with WarnerMedia.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla ordered the petitioners to provide substantive responses to eight interrogatories and five document requests by September 12, 2024, and to identify convenient deposition dates for depositions by September 27, 2024. She denied, at that time, WarnerMedia’s request for an informal discovery conference and granted its request to extend the briefing deadline to October 11, 2024.
The detailed version
- Marcus Brooks v. Warnermedia Direct LLC · No. 1:23-cv-11030
- Katherine Failla
- Aug. 28, 2024
Background
The action arose from a petition to compel arbitration. WarnerMedia Direct, LLC agreed that arbitration of the underlying dispute was required, but cross-moved to require arbitration before the provider specified in its current arbitration agreement. In an earlier order, the court deferred ruling because there was a disputed factual issue about whether the petitioners had assented to WarnerMedia’s current agreement, referred to in the order as the NAM Agreement. The court authorized discovery on that question.
Discovery dispute
WarnerMedia served eight interrogatories and five requests for production. It also asked for dates for short depositions. According to WarnerMedia’s letter motion, the petitioners declined to provide deposition dates, stating that depositions would be cumulative of their written responses. The petitioners later provided declarations listing email and physical addresses, household members, and identical statements that, to the best of their knowledge, they had not been authorized users on another person’s HBO Max or Max account from December 20, 2022, to the present. They otherwise objected to the requests and said they would not provide additional responses.
WarnerMedia asked for additional information and documents concerning the petitioners’ internet-enabled devices, occasions when they accessed or streamed HBO Max or Max, limited browser history, payments to WarnerMedia, and communications with WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia also asked the court to require the petitioners to attend short depositions and to extend the briefing deadline.
Ruling
Judge Katherine Polk Failla found that the petitioners’ declarations did not provide sufficient information. The court ordered the petitioners to provide substantive responses to WarnerMedia’s eight interrogatories and five requests for production by September 12, 2024. The court limited the first document request to access to hbomax.com or max.com and ordered the petitioners to identify convenient deposition dates for depositions to occur by September 27, 2024.
The court denied, at that time, WarnerMedia’s request for an informal conference about the discovery dispute. It stated that the request could be renewed if the petitioners failed to comply with the order. The court also granted WarnerMedia’s request to extend the briefing deadline from September 6, 2024, to October 11, 2024, and directed the clerk to terminate the pending motion at the relevant docket entry.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.