Burgos v. Sunvalleytek International, Inc.
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:18-cv-06910
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 7
In Burgos v. Sunvalleytek, Judge Gilliam granted the parties’ request to extend discovery and related class-certification and expert deadlines.
The plaintiffs, Defendant Sunvalleytek International, Inc., and the schedule for the pending case were affected.
What happened
In Burgos v. Sunvalleytek International, Inc., the plaintiffs and defendant jointly asked for two more months to complete fact discovery and move other case deadlines. They said they needed additional information from Amazon, entities in China, and electronic records, as well as more depositions.
The court granted the request and moved the fact-discovery deadline to February 13, 2020. It also moved deadlines for expert disclosures, depositions, class-certification briefs, and the class-certification hearing, which was reset for July 9, 2020.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. issued the scheduling order on November 20, 2019. The order addressed case scheduling and did not decide the parties’ underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Burgos v. Sunvalleytek International, Inc. · No. 4:18-cv-06910
- Haywood Gilliam
- Nov. 20, 2019
Background
Plaintiffs Ines Burgos and Mongkol Mahavongrakul, individually and on behalf of other similarly situated individuals, and Defendant Sunvalleytek International, Inc. jointly requested a two-month extension of the fact-discovery deadline and related deadlines. The court’s February 22, 2019 scheduling order had set fact discovery to close on December 13, 2019 and scheduled the class-certification hearing for May 7, 2020.
The parties stated that they had pursued discovery diligently but needed more time. They identified discovery from Amazon.com, Inc.; documents and information from entities in China; additional depositions; cost-related documents; and electronically stored information, including emails. They also described difficulties obtaining electronic copies of Amazon product listings and related consumer reviews, questions, and answers. The parties were negotiating a stipulation intended to narrow the issues and reduce the discovery required.
Legal standard
The parties relied on Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows a case-management deadline to be changed only for good cause. The cited standard asks whether the deadline could not reasonably be met despite the diligence of the party seeking the extension. The parties argued that their diligence and the discovery difficulties established good cause.
Ruling
The court granted the parties’ request for a two-month extension of the close of fact discovery and all other listed deadlines. The amended schedule set the following dates:
- Factual discovery deadline: February 13, 2020 - Motion for class certification: March 17, 2020 - Initial expert disclosures: March 17, 2020 - Deadline to depose plaintiffs’ experts: March 31, 2020 - Opposition to class certification: May 6, 2020 - Defendant’s expert disclosures: May 6, 2020 - Deadline to depose defendant’s experts: May 20, 2020 - Class-certification reply brief: June 3, 2020 - Class-certification hearing: July 9, 2020, at 2:00 p.m.
The order changed the litigation schedule only; it did not decide the merits of the claims or class-certification question.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.