Kiseleva v. Litman
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:23-cv-09496
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
Kiseleva v. Greenspan: Judge Caproni ordered limited employee-record discovery and set production deadlines.
Alla Kiseleva and the defendants, who were required to exchange specified discovery subject to the Court’s limits and deadlines.
What happened
In Kiseleva v. Greenspan, Alla Kiseleva sought personnel and payroll-related records for BeautyFix workers, including information about pay, hours, tips, and overtime.
The defendants objected that the requests were too broad or otherwise outside the case’s scope, including objections about the time period, work location, employee types, and request scope.
Judge Valerie Caproni ordered production of some documents, limited by time, location, and employee type, and set deadlines for documents held by the defendants and by third-party payroll entities.
The detailed version
- Kiseleva v. Litman · No. 1:23-cv-09496
- Valerie Caproni
- Oct. 30, 2024
Background
The Court had previously ordered Alla Kiseleva to identify outstanding document requests and the defendants to identify their objections. Kiseleva requested personnel records for all injectors, aestheticians, and front desk employees, including records concerning employee classification, pay method and frequency, hours worked, tips, and overtime.
The defendants raised nine objections, including objections concerning the relevant time period, work location, employee type, scope, vagueness, and overbreadth. Applying Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, the Court explained that discovery must concern nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. The Court also stated that discovery cannot be based on speculation about unrelated wrongdoing.
Ruling
The Court determined that parts of the requests were overbroad or outside the scope of the litigation. It identified four problems: the requests did not specify a relevant time period or work site; the requests sought personnel records for front desk employees and aestheticians; the requests sought compliance documents such as wage notices that were not relevant to allegations in the amended complaint; and the requests included a blanket demand for any other documents related to wages, hours, or compensation that might be relevant.
The Court ordered the defendants to produce documents responsive to Requests i–vi that were within their custody or control by November 1, 2024, subject to three restrictions. The relevant period was July 1, 2015, through December 31, 2021. Personnel records had to concern employees or independent contractors who worked at the BeautyFix 23rd Street location. The defendants did not have to produce personnel records for aestheticians or front desk employees.
The Court separately ordered the defendants to produce, by November 8, 2024, responsive documents held by third-party payroll entities, subject to the same restrictions. The Court also stated that it would enter the parties’ stipulated confidentiality order separately.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.