Jackson v. Senior Care Solutions, Inc

Background

Myisha Jackson brought an employment-discrimination lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She alleged that Senior Care Solutions, Inc. applied different employment terms and conditions to her because of her race and terminated her in September 2019. The court had allowed Jackson to amend her complaint to add a claim for punitive damages, without deciding whether that amendment had merit.

The order concerned four discovery-related motions: Senior Care Solutions’ motion to compel; Jackson’s motion to compel; the parties’ joint motion to modify the scheduling order; and Jackson’s motion to compel a deposition of a corporate witness under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). Discovery had originally been scheduled to end on July 1, 2021.

Senior Care Solutions’ Motion to Compel

The court granted the company’s motion. Within 21 days, Jackson was ordered to:

- Answer the company’s Request for Admission 1, which asked her to admit or deny that no company employee made negative statements about race to her during her employment. - Answer Interrogatories 7, 8, and 11. These asked her to identify people with whom she communicated about the lawsuit, describe facts supporting her allegation that the company terminated her because of her race, and identify people involved in an alleged argument. - Produce outstanding documents responsive to Document Requests 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, and 15, to the extent those documents had not already been produced to her by the company.

The court rejected Jackson’s objections based on relevance, harassment, hearsay, burdensomeness, duplication, and the work-product doctrine. The work-product doctrine generally protects materials prepared for litigation or trial, but the court concluded that it did not protect the communications, notes, and other materials at issue. The court also explained that discoverable information need not itself be admissible as evidence.

Jackson’s Motion to Compel

The court granted in part and denied in part Jackson’s motion.

The court denied her requests concerning the company’s initial disclosures, concluding that those disclosures were not vague and complied with the applicable rule. It also denied her requests concerning Interrogatories 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17, finding that the company’s responses complied with the rules. The court declined to consider several additional arguments Jackson raised after filing her motion because they were outside the motion’s original scope.

The court denied Jackson’s requests concerning her Requests for Admission 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14. It found that the company’s answers and supplemental answers complied with the rule governing requests for admission, which did not require the company to provide further factual explanations supporting each denial.

For Jackson’s document requests, the court found that the company had complied with the applicable rule for Requests 1 through 11 and 13 through 14. The court ruled that the company was not required to provide an index or further identify documents beyond producing responsive materials. But the court granted in part Jackson’s motion as to Document Request 12. Within 21 days, the company had to produce its profit-and-loss statements from 2017 through the present. The court did not order production of the other financial materials listed in that request.

The court denied Jackson’s request for $500,000 in sanctions. Because her motion was granted in part and denied in part, the court did not award attorney’s fees on that motion.

Scheduling Order

The court granted the parties’ joint motion to modify the scheduling order. The parties had agreed to complete fact discovery within 30 days after the court ruled on the discovery motions and not to serve new discovery requests or notice new depositions without the court’s permission. The court found good cause to modify the schedule and ordered that an amended pretrial scheduling order issue.

Corporate-Witness Deposition

The court denied Jackson’s motion to compel a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition. Jackson first noticed the deposition on August 2, 2021, more than 30 days after the discovery deadline. The court found that she had not shown the diligence and good cause required to change the existing schedule. The court did not decide the separate issue of whether the deposition conflicted with the parties’ agreement concerning discovery.

Attorney’s Fees and Final Orders

Although the company’s motion to compel was granted, the court decided that each side should bear its own attorney’s fees and expenses. The court ordered that all prior consistent orders remain in effect and warned that failure to comply could lead to remedies or sanctions, including costs, limits on evidence, striking pleadings, dismissal with prejudice, or default judgment.

Disposition

The court granted Senior Care Solutions’ motion to compel; granted in part and denied in part Jackson’s motion to compel; granted the joint motion to modify the scheduling order; and denied Jackson’s motion to compel a corporate-witness deposition.