Singla v. Sherwood Partners, Inc.
- John Koeltl
- 1:24-cv-04190
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Singla v. Sherwood Partners, Judge Stein denied without prejudice a motion to compel discovery but ordered amended responses and a production update.
The plaintiff and defendants in Singla v. Sherwood Partners, Inc.; the defendants were directed to provide amended discovery responses, supplemental production, and a status update.
What happened
In Singla v. Sherwood Partners, the plaintiff asked the court to require the defendants to provide fuller answers to document requests and interrogatories. The plaintiff said the defendants had promised to produce documents without giving a date, made improper objections, and gave unsigned or incomplete interrogatory answers.
The plaintiff also requested costs and attorneys’ fees. The court’s rules require the parties to meaningfully discuss a discovery dispute before bringing it to the court, and the plaintiff’s letter did not say that this discussion had occurred.
Judge Gary Stein denied the motion without prejudice. The defendants stated that they would provide amended discovery responses and additional document production by July 30, 2025, so the court directed them to do so and to provide a status update by that date. The court also required the August 15 status letter to address this discovery issue and the overall progress of discovery.
The detailed version
- Singla v. Sherwood Partners, Inc. · No. 1:24-cv-04190
- John Koeltl
- July 25, 2025
Background
The plaintiff filed the action on May 31, 2024. After an April 25, 2025 order requiring the defendants to respond to overdue discovery, and an extension, the defendants served responses on June 6, 2025.
The plaintiff then sent a June 12 letter identifying alleged deficiencies. For document requests, the plaintiff challenged the defendants’ statements that they would produce documents at an unspecified later time and objected to what the plaintiff described as misplaced relevance objections. For interrogatories, the plaintiff said the responses were unsigned, incomplete, and improperly referred to other answers or documents that had not been produced. The plaintiff said the defendants had not supplemented their responses after being given additional time and filed a letter motion to compel under Rules 33 and 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The plaintiff also requested costs and attorneys’ fees.
Ruling
The court denied the motion without prejudice because the plaintiff did not represent that counsel had meaningfully met and conferred about the dispute, as required by the judge’s individual practice rules. “Without prejudice” was part of the court’s stated disposition.
The court also noted that the defendants stated they would provide amended discovery responses and supplemental document production by July 30, 2025. The court directed the defendants to do so and to provide a production-status update by that date. It further directed that the status letter scheduled for August 15, 2025 include an update about this discovery dispute and the general progress of discovery.
Classification
This is a procedural discovery order. It resolved a motion to compel discovery based on the required meet-and-confer process and issued directions concerning future discovery responses; it did not decide the underlying claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.