Fecteau v. The City of Mount Vernon
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:23-cv-09173
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 7
Fecteau v. City of Mount Vernon: Magistrate Judge McCarthy denied Fecteau’s protective-order and judicial-notice motions.
Matthew J. Fecteau’s discovery requests were denied. The City Defendants and their lawyers were not excluded from Charlene Humphreys’s deposition and were not barred from assisting her with discovery responses. The court also declined to treat the criminal-case documents as proof of the facts stated in them.
What happened
In Fecteau v. The City of Mount Vernon, Matthew J. Fecteau, who represented himself, asked the court to restrict the City Defendants and their lawyers during Defendant Charlene Humphreys’s deposition and discovery. He also asked the court to recognize documents from Humphreys’s criminal case.
The court found that Fecteau had not shown a specific, serious harm or other good reason to exclude the City Defendants or their lawyers from the deposition or to prevent them from assisting Humphreys. It also said that Humphreys, not Fecteau, must assert any protection against self-incrimination. The court would not allow Fecteau to designate Humphreys as an adverse witness and would not recognize the contents of the indictment or a related order as proof of the facts stated in them.
Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy denied both motions: the motion for a protective order and the request for judicial notice. The Clerk was asked to terminate those pending motions.
The detailed version
- Fecteau v. The City of Mount Vernon · No. 7:23-cv-09173
- Kenneth Karas
- June 11, 2025
Background
Matthew J. Fecteau, proceeding without a lawyer, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of Mount Vernon and several individual defendants, including Charlene Humphreys. The opinion addressed two pending requests: Fecteau’s motion for a protective order and his request for judicial notice of an indictment and court order from a state criminal case involving Humphreys.
Protective order
Fecteau asked the court to require Humphreys’s deposition to occur outside the presence of the City Defendants and their lawyers, prevent them from communicating with or preparing Humphreys for the deposition or discovery responses, allow him to treat Humphreys as an adverse witness, and require Humphreys to provide interrogatory answers without their assistance.
A protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) may protect a person from identified harms such as annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden. The person seeking the order must show good cause, including a clearly defined, specific, and serious injury. Fecteau argued that the criminal charges against Humphreys created a risk that the City Defendants or their lawyers would influence her testimony and could affect her protection against self-incrimination.
The court denied the request because it found Fecteau’s concerns speculative. He did not explain how the criminal charges would cause the City Defendants or their lawyers to influence Humphreys, identify legal authority for excluding them, or show a specific serious injury to himself or Humphreys. The court also noted that overlapping issues and possible conflicts among co-defendants do not automatically require separating them during discovery. Fecteau could ask about communications or coordination between Humphreys and the City Defendants during the deposition.
The court further stated that the protection against being compelled to incriminate oneself is personal to Humphreys, so Fecteau could not assert it on her behalf. It also found no evidence that Humphreys would give false testimony if the City Defendants participated. The court did not grant Fecteau permission to treat Humphreys as an adverse witness, noting that he had not explained the relief he sought. The court reminded him that the deposition could not be conducted in a way that unreasonably annoyed, embarrassed, or oppressed Humphreys.
Judicial notice
Judicial notice allows a court to accept certain facts without requiring ordinary proof when they are generally known or can be accurately determined from reliable sources. Courts may recognize the existence of public filings, but generally may not treat statements in another court’s filings as established truth merely because they appear in those documents.
Fecteau asked the court to take judicial notice of an indictment involving Humphreys and a related order concerning disclosure obligations in that criminal case. The court declined because Fecteau offered the documents to support the truth of facts asserted in the other litigation, rather than merely to show that the documents had been filed. The court also found the related order irrelevant to this case and noted that it had already taken judicial notice of the criminal charges against Humphreys.
Disposition
The court denied Fecteau’s motion for a protective order and denied his request for judicial notice. The Clerk was asked to terminate the motions identified as Docket Nos. 209 and 214. This was an ancillary discovery and evidence-related order; it did not decide the underlying § 1983 claims.
Judge
Judith C. McCarthy, United States Magistrate Judge, signed the order.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.