Morales v. City of New York

Background

Ricardo Morales brought a civil-rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of New York, Mayor Bill De Blasio, and Department of Citywide Administrative Services Commissioner Lisette Camilo. He alleges that the defendants terminated his employment in retaliation for activity protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Morales alleges that he opposed two City-related real-estate transactions. One involved the Water’s Edge restaurant, which the City leased on allegedly favorable terms to Harendra Singh despite alleged defaults and political contributions to De Blasio’s campaign. The other involved Rivington House, a property formerly associated with a nonprofit medical residential-care facility. Morales alleges that deed restrictions were removed, the property was sold to private developers, and City officials later attempted to manage public messaging about the transaction. He says he objected to what he considered the City’s false public narrative and was terminated in February 2017 under the stated reason that the City had decided to go in a different direction.

Discovery disputes

Morales sought unredacted copies of documents withheld or redacted under the deliberative-process privilege. That privilege generally protects certain government documents reflecting internal, predecisional, and deliberative agency decision-making. The defendants claimed that many of the disputed emails concerned the City’s messaging strategy about Rivington, public statements, or press inquiries.

The court held that the defendants had not provided sufficiently specific explanations showing that most of the documents were both predecisional and deliberative. The court directed the defendants to produce unredacted copies of Priv-Redact 0003, 0006, 0014, 0016, 0017, 0029, 0030, 0031, 0032, 0033, and 0034. It also directed production of Priv-Redact 0007, 0008, 0022, 0023, 0024, 0025, 0026, 0027, and 0028, but allowed the defendants to continue withholding or redacting those documents to the extent they were protected by the work-product doctrine or attorney-client privilege.

The court did not make a final privilege ruling on Priv-Redact 0001 and 0002. It ordered the defendants to provide unredacted copies of those documents, along with the cited executive order, to the court for private review. Morales had challenged the deliberative-process privilege, but had not specifically challenged the defendants’ separate assertions of work-product or attorney-client protection.

Depositions

Morales sought to compel depositions of three high-ranking City officials: Jon Paul Lupo, Anthony Shorris, and Emma Wolfe. Under the governing standard, such officials generally should not be deposed about the reasons for official action unless exceptional circumstances exist. Exceptional circumstances may exist when an official has unique firsthand knowledge relevant to the claims or when the information cannot be obtained through less burdensome means.

The court found that Morales had shown exceptional circumstances for deposing Lupo. The court relied on allegations and communications indicating that Lupo helped control a May 2016 meeting about Rivington, presented the City’s position, and may have had firsthand knowledge about the City’s public narrative and the connection between that narrative and Morales’s termination. The court therefore ordered the defendants to produce Lupo for a deposition on a date agreed upon by counsel and the witness.

The court declined to compel Shorris’s deposition at that stage. It found that communications between Shorris and Camilo showed possible knowledge but did not establish that Shorris directed Camilo to terminate Morales or possessed unique information unavailable from Camilo. The motion to compel Shorris’s deposition was denied without prejudice to renewal if later discovery produced additional supporting evidence.

The court also declined to compel Wolfe’s deposition at that stage. Evidence that Wolfe may have opposed Morales’s involvement in Water’s Edge negotiations did not clearly link her conduct to Morales’s termination or protected activity. The motion to compel Wolfe’s deposition was denied without prejudice to renewal.

Disposition

The court ordered production of the specified documents, subject to the stated privilege limitation for some documents, and ordered in-camera review of Priv-Redact 0001 and 0002. It granted the request to compel Lupo’s deposition and denied without prejudice the requests to compel Shorris’s and Wolfe’s depositions. It also granted the parties’ request to extend the close of fact discovery from September 30, 2019, to February 7, 2020. The order resolved discovery issues and did not decide the merits of Morales’s retaliation claims.