Goyette v. City of Minneapolis

Background

The plaintiffs are journalists, photographers, other members of the press, and Communications Workers of America, an international labor union representing news media workers. They brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute, alleging constitutional violations, civil conspiracy, and failure to intervene.

The magistrate judge’s scheduling order required fact discovery to be completed by December 1, 2021. The parties exchanged initial disclosures on March 29, 2021, and the City Defendants produced more than 6,000 pages of documents. The plaintiffs served discovery on several defendants and nonparties during July and August 2021, but did not serve discovery requests on the City Defendants until November 5, 2021—four days after the court’s opinion says the deadline had passed, and too late for responses before the December 1 deadline. The plaintiffs then moved on November 30, 2021, to extend fact discovery by eight months and extend other deadlines by several months.

The magistrate judge denied the motion on February 8, 2022, finding that the plaintiffs had not shown diligence sufficient to establish good cause for changing the scheduling order. The plaintiffs appealed that nondispositive ruling to the district court.

Legal standard

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b)(4), a scheduling order may be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s consent. The main consideration is whether the party seeking the change diligently tried to meet the existing deadlines. The district court reviews a magistrate judge’s ruling on a nondispositive issue under a highly deferential standard and will change it only if it is clearly erroneous or contrary to law.

Analysis

The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the agreement of some defendants supported extending the schedule. The parties’ agreement did not establish the plaintiffs’ diligence, and two remaining defendants—the City Defendants—opposed the motion. Those were also the defendants from whom the plaintiffs had failed to seek timely discovery.

The court held that the magistrate judge correctly focused on whether the plaintiffs diligently sought discovery from the City Defendants. The City Defendants had been parties since the original complaint in June 2020, and the plaintiffs had received their initial disclosures more than seven months before the discovery deadline. The plaintiffs did not seek discovery from them until more than seventeen months after the case began and waited until one day before the fact-discovery deadline to request an eight-month extension. The plaintiffs acknowledged that they could have sought the discovery earlier.

The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that changed circumstances justified the extension. The plaintiffs’ decision to focus resources on seeking injunctive relief against State Defendants was a litigation strategy, not a change in circumstances that prevented compliance with the schedule. The court further found that the third amended complaint, filed in September 2021, did not prevent timely discovery from the City Defendants because the City Defendants were already in the case, had provided initial disclosures, and the plaintiffs could have sought discovery during the weeks remaining before the deadline.

Finally, the court declined to grant the plaintiffs’ alternative requests for additional time for parties other than the City Defendants and an order compelling the City Defendants to respond to the late discovery. The plaintiffs had not presented those requests to the magistrate judge, so the district court treated them as waived on appeal.

Disposition

The court affirmed the magistrate judge’s February 8, 2022 order. It also denied the plaintiffs’ request for alternative relief.