Torliatt v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC
- William Orrick
- 3:19-cv-04303
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Torliatt v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, Judge Orrick denied defendants’ discovery-stay motion and granted Torliatt’s motion to schedule a case-management conference.
The ruling affected Lawrence Torliatt, PHH Mortgage Corporation, and Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC by keeping discovery from being paused and setting the case-management schedule.
What happened
In Torliatt v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, defendants PHH Mortgage Corporation and Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC asked the court to pause discovery until their motion to dismiss was decided. Lawrence Torliatt asked the court to schedule a case-management conference because an earlier conference had not been reset after mediation.
The court said a pending motion to dismiss does not automatically justify stopping discovery. Defendants relied on arguments from their motion to dismiss and said that motion was likely to end the case, but the court found that this did not show sufficient good cause.
The court denied the motion to stay discovery and granted Torliatt’s motion to schedule a case-management conference. Judge William Orrick set the conference and the hearing on the motion to dismiss for April 15, 2020, and required a joint case-management statement by April 8, 2020.
The detailed version
- Torliatt v. Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC · No. 3:19-cv-04303
- William Orrick
- Mar. 13, 2020
Background
Defendants PHH Mortgage Corporation and Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC moved to stay, or pause, discovery until the court resolved their pending motion to dismiss. Plaintiff Lawrence Torliatt moved to set a case-management conference because the conference previously scheduled for November 5, 2019, had been vacated when the parties obtained a stay of proceedings for mediation.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not provide for an automatic discovery stay merely because a motion to dismiss is pending. Although a court has broad discretion to stay discovery while a potentially case-ending motion is pending, the party requesting the stay must make a strong showing of good cause.
The defendants primarily repeated arguments from their motion to dismiss and asserted that the motion was likely to dispose of the case. The court held that this was not sufficient good cause to stay discovery.
Ruling
The court denied defendants’ motion to stay discovery. It granted Torliatt’s motion to set a case-management conference. The court set the conference, together with the hearing on defendants’ pending motion to dismiss, for April 15, 2020. It ordered the parties to file a joint case-management statement by April 8, 2020.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.