Glencore Ltd. v. Louis Dreyfus Company B.V.

Background

This order resolves multiple discovery disputes in the case. Discovery is the pretrial process through which parties obtain relevant, nonprivileged information from one another and others. The court had previously directed the parties to try to resolve their disputes and later heard argument on six remaining issues.

Plaintiffs’ motion to compel documents

The plaintiffs sought documents concerning defendants’ sales commitments, buybacks and cancellations, daily global position reports, value at risk, and working-capital allocation.

The court denied the request for daily global position reports. It found that the reports were not shown to be more relevant in this case than in a parallel proceeding, where similar requests had been denied as tangential.

The court denied the request for additional sales-commitment communications. The plaintiffs’ theory that lower-level employees might possess evidence of a plan to delay cancellations, buybacks, or rollovers was too speculative, particularly because defendants had produced communications from executives and other relevant documents. The court also denied the request for additional documents about buybacks, cancellations, and rollovers, finding that the plaintiffs’ justification remained speculative and did not establish that the requested discovery was warranted.

The court denied the request for documents about value-at-risk and working-capital allocation. The plaintiffs did not provide support, apart from a belief that such communications should exist, showing that the documents existed outside the material already produced or should be compelled.

Depositions of Hamy and Mamalis

The plaintiffs asked the court to compel defendants to make Olivier Hamy and Nigel Mamalis available for depositions under Rule 30(b)(6). The court denied that motion because the plaintiffs did not establish that either person was an officer, director, or managing agent who could be noticed for a deposition in that manner. The court also agreed that the plaintiffs should have sought permission before exceeding the ordinary limit of ten depositions.

The court nevertheless gave the parties 94 days from the date of the order to try to arrange Mamalis’s deposition through a process involving approval from Swiss authorities. The court found that neither side had acted in bad faith concerning the parties’ understanding of Swiss requirements. The court denied as moot defendants’ protective-order motion concerning the length of depositions of Nicosia, Malone, Brown, Dyer, and Tancredi.

International letter of request and outside brief

The court granted defendants’ motion for issuance of an international letter of request to the Supreme Court of New South Wales concerning evidence from Mark Allen. An international letter of request is a formal request for assistance from a court in another jurisdiction. The court did not permit defendants to extend discovery generally, but gave them 39 days from the date of the order to issue the request and depose Allen.

The court denied the parallel plaintiffs’ request for permission to file an amicus brief. If Allen’s deposition occurred, questioning would be limited to four hours and could not concern topics solely related to the parallel case. The court reserved judgment on how the resulting discovery could be used. The parties were also ordered to discuss whether documents Allen produced in the parallel case could be treated as produced in this case.

Protective order concerning deposition topics

The court denied defendants’ motion to strike Topic 17 from the plaintiffs’ amended Rule 30(b)(6) deposition notices. Topic 17 concerned investigations, penalties, sanctions, disciplinary actions, and settlements involving defendants or their related personnel and cotton contracts or trading activities. The court found the topic relevant for discovery and explained that discovery relevance does not require the information already to be admissible at trial. The parties were permitted to conduct a limited deposition on Topic 17 or discuss producing documents instead, with any document production limited to materials within defendants’ control.

The court granted defendants’ motion to strike Topic 22. That topic concerned the preservation and location of communications involving cotton traders other than three identified traders. The court found that the plaintiffs had not provided an adequate factual basis for this type of “discovery on discovery,” particularly after the court rejected the plaintiffs’ underlying requests for additional production.

Interrogatories and sealing

The parties were ordered to meet and confer about the plaintiffs’ 11 interrogatories and submit a joint letter about any remaining disputes by April 2, 2025. The court also granted all of the parties’ motions to seal the specified letters and attachments.

Disposition

Judge Jennifer E. Willis denied the plaintiffs’ document-compulsion requests and their motion to compel Hamy and Mamalis, while allowing the parties additional time to attempt Mamalis’s deposition. The court granted defendants’ request for an international letter of request, denied the parallel plaintiffs’ request to file an amicus brief, denied the motion to strike Topic 17, granted the motion to strike Topic 22, denied another protective-order motion as moot, and granted the motions to seal. The order set additional deadlines for the remaining discovery.