Harris v. NYC Human Resources Administration
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-02011
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Harris v. City of New York, Judge Cronan granted Harris’s discovery motion, ordering preservation records, policies, and a limited deposition.
Mary L. Harris and the City of New York, including the New York City Human Resources Administration for purposes of the ordered document production and deposition.
What happened
In Harris v. City of New York, Mary L. Harris asked the court to require the City to produce litigation-hold notices and document-preservation and destruction policies. She also requested a deposition of a City representative about document retention, evidence preservation, and field sheets.
The court found a preliminary basis for concern that field sheets from comparator Supervisor III Alan Block might not have been preserved. It emphasized that it had not decided whether spoliation occurred or whether sanctions were justified.
Judge John P. Cronan granted Harris’s motion to compel. He ordered production of the litigation-hold notices and the City’s preservation and destruction policies, plus a two-hour deposition by specified deadlines, and extended certain pretrial deadlines.
The detailed version
- Harris v. NYC Human Resources Administration · No. 1:20-cv-02011
- John Cronan
- Apr. 22, 2025
Background
On April 11, 2025, Mary L. Harris moved to compel the City of New York to produce two categories of documents: (1) litigation-hold notices arising from her 2019 complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and this lawsuit, and (2) all document-preservation and destruction policies in effect at the New York City Human Resources Administration from 2018 through the present. Harris also sought a deposition under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6), which allows an organization to designate a representative to testify about specified topics. The requested topics included the City’s document-retention policies, its efforts to preserve relevant evidence, and its handling of field sheets.
Court’s analysis
The court agreed that field sheets maintained by employees who were not comparators were not particularly relevant to Harris’s claims. But Harris presented deposition evidence that Alan Block, a comparator who was a Supervisor III, had completed field sheets and had never been asked to preserve documents relevant to the lawsuit. Because the City had not produced Block’s field sheets, the court found that Harris had made a preliminary showing of possible spoliation, meaning the loss, destruction, or failure to preserve potentially relevant evidence. That showing provided good cause for limited additional discovery.
The court explained that litigation-hold instructions are generally protected attorney-client communications, but that protection is not an absolute bar to discovery when there has been a preliminary showing of spoliation. It also noted that information about whether litigation notices were sent, as distinct from the notices’ contents, falls outside the attorney-client privilege.
Ruling
Judge John P. Cronan granted Harris’s motion to compel production. The City was ordered to produce the litigation-hold notices from the 2019 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint and this action, along with all document-preservation and destruction policies in place at the New York City Human Resources Administration from 2018 to the present, by April 25, 2025. The City was also ordered to produce a Rule 30(b)(6) designee for a deposition by April 29, 2025; the deposition could last no longer than two hours.
The court extended the deadline for motions in limine and pretrial statements to May 2, 2025, with oppositions due May 7, 2025. The final pretrial conference remained scheduled for May 14, 2025, and trial remained scheduled to begin May 19, 2025. The court expressly stated that it had not concluded that spoliation occurred or that sanctions were warranted. The Clerk was directed to close Docket Number 191.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.