Duke v. San Francisco Community College District

Background

Shalamon Duke challenged Magistrate Judge Kim’s April 21, 2021 order imposing discovery sanctions concerning Duke’s personal journal. The district court had previously ruled that Duke produced the journal after the fact-discovery deadline. Judge Kim also found that Duke violated General Order 71 by failing to produce the journal within 30 days after the defendant’s November 2019 motion to dismiss, and violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 by failing to produce it within 14 days after the June 2020 initial case management conference.

The defendant requested issue preclusion as a sanction. Instead, Judge Kim barred Duke from using or relying on the journal at trial, ordered that the jury be told Duke did not produce it when required, allowed the jury to draw an adverse inference, and imposed $3,300 in monetary sanctions.

District Court’s Analysis

Under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(A) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a), a district court may modify or set aside a magistrate judge’s order on a nondispositive matter only if the order is clearly erroneous or contrary to law. The court explained that this is a deferential standard: factual findings may be set aside only when the court has a definite and firm conviction that a mistake occurred, while legal conclusions are reviewed anew to determine whether they are contrary to law.

The court rejected Duke’s argument that the sanctions order denied him a chance to be heard. It found that Duke had presented arguments in a joint discovery letter brief filed on March 24, 2021, responded to further briefing ordered by Judge Kim on April 8, and had additional opportunities to address the journal’s production and the appropriateness of sanctions. The court said Judge Kim was not required to consider Duke’s later filing because Duke submitted it without the court’s permission.

The court also rejected Duke’s argument that Judge Kim had not considered whether the late disclosure was harmless. The court stated that the April 21 order described the Ninth Circuit’s five-factor harmlessness test and expressly considered whether the late disclosure harmed the defendants. Finally, the court found that Duke’s argument based on the law-of-the-case doctrine rested on a misreading of an earlier order, which had left discovery sanctions unresolved and called for further briefing.

Disposition

The court DENIED Duke’s motion for relief from the nondispositive order of a magistrate judge. Separately, the court noted that Judge Kim’s April 21 order required defendants to file the journal and a deposition transcript as part of the official record, under seal if appropriate. Because the defendant had filed a version of the journal with every word covered by black boxes but had not filed an unredacted version, the court ordered the defendant to file an unredacted version by the close of business on May 11, 2021, under seal if warranted by the local rules.