Daywitt v. MN Dept. of Human Services
- Elizabeth Cowan Wright
- 0:18-cv-03430
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 4
In Daywitt v. MN Dept. of Human Services, Judge Wright denied the communication motion without prejudice and denied the response request as moot.
The order affected the three plaintiffs’ request to communicate by monthly ITV meetings and their request for an order requiring the defendants to respond. The defendants had already filed their opposition, and the plaintiffs may renew the ITV request if the case continues.
What happened
In Daywitt v. MN Dept. of Human Services, the plaintiffs asked the court to require monthly ITV meetings so they could communicate with one another about litigating their case. They said they were in different facilities and could not effectively communicate by mail.
The defendants opposed the request and argued that it should be treated as a request for a preliminary injunction. The court declined to do so because the requested communication related to the litigation process. The plaintiffs also asked the court to order the defendants to respond to the communication motion.
Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright denied the request for an order requiring a response as moot because the defendants had already opposed the motion. She denied the monthly communication motion without prejudice because the plaintiffs had completed their briefing without those meetings; the plaintiffs may renew the motion if the case continues after the motion to dismiss.
The detailed version
- Daywitt v. MN Dept. of Human Services · No. 0:18-cv-03430
- Elizabeth Cowan Wright
- July 31, 2023
Background
The plaintiffs filed a motion seeking monthly ITV communication between them. They said they were in two different locations and had no access to one another except through postal mail, which they considered too slow and unreliable for litigation. They also said they were disadvantaged because they were not represented by counsel.
The plaintiffs sought the meetings to help them handle motion practice, respond to and serve discovery requests, and prepare for depositions. Separately, they asked the court to order the defendants to respond to the ITV motion while addressing the defendants’ request for more time to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint.
The court’s analysis
The defendants opposed the ITV motion. They argued that it requested extraordinary injunctive relief and should be treated as a motion for a preliminary injunction, which would require applying the factors from Dataphase Systems, Inc. v. C L Systems, Inc. The defendants also argued that the plaintiffs could communicate by mail or through a third party and that the request was not authorized by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The court declined to treat the ITV motion as a preliminary-injunction motion because it sought action related to the litigation process. The court cited an earlier related proceeding involving the plaintiffs for the proposition that they did not have a constitutional right to demand special accommodations from the defendants to help litigate their case.
On the request itself, the court noted that the plaintiffs had timely filed an opposition to the defendants’ motion to dismiss containing signatures for all three plaintiffs and had filed a reply supporting the ITV motion. Because briefing on the motion to dismiss was complete, the court found no need for ITV communication for the litigation at that time.
Disposition
The court denied as moot the plaintiffs’ request that it order the defendants to respond to the ITV motion, because the defendants had already filed their opposition. The court denied the ITV motion without prejudice. That means the plaintiffs may renew that motion if the case survives the motion to dismiss. The order did not decide the motion to dismiss or the underlying claims.
Order
1. Plaintiffs’ Motion to Allow Monthly ITV Communication Between Plaintiffs (Dkt. 9) was DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 2. Plaintiffs’ request in their response to the defendants’ extension request (Dkt. 25) was DENIED AS MOOT.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.