State Of New York v. United States Department of the Treasury

Background

New York and New Jersey sought documents from the United States Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. The parties submitted competing proposals about the timing of the defendants’ review and production: the plaintiffs proposed a 90-day deadline, while the defendants proposed that the Court take no action.

The Court’s stated inclinations

After reviewing the parties’ motion papers and relevant case law, the Court said it was inclined to set a production schedule between those proposals. The Court was also inclined to require the defendants to provide a Vaughn Index on a rolling basis. A Vaughn Index is a document-by-document description of materials withheld from production and the reasons asserted for withholding them. The Court further said it was inclined to deny the plaintiffs’ challenge to the defendants’ invocation of applicable privileges as premature, meaning the Court viewed that challenge as not yet ready for decision.

Required next steps and disposition

The Court ordered the parties to meet in person for at least one hour by December 3, 2019, to discuss a possible production schedule and ways to expedite review and production. The listed possibilities included narrowing the requests, agreeing to postpone or forgo review of categories of documents likely to be exempt, and identifying information the plaintiffs most wanted reviewed quickly. The parties also had to file a letter by December 5, 2019, reporting their positions and the status of production as of that date. They were ordered to appear for a conference before Judge Jesse M. Furman on December 11, 2019. The order did not itself establish the final production schedule or issue a final ruling on the privilege challenge.