City of Almaty, Kazahkstan v. Mukhtar Ablyazov
- John Koeltl
- 1:15-cv-05345
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In City of Almaty v. Mukhtar Ablyazov, Judge Parker denied Litco LLC’s motion to quash a subpoena seeking information from Latham & Watkins.
Non-party Litco LLC must not have its motion to quash granted; the subpoena served on Latham & Watkins LLP may proceed, subject to any other issues not addressed in this opinion. The plaintiffs and defendants sought the subpoenaed information.
What happened
City of Almaty, Kazakhstan and BTA Bank JSC served a subpoena on Latham & Watkins LLP seeking a nondisclosure agreement with non-party Litco LLC, related communications, and information about Litco’s owners, members, employees, or agents. Litco asked the court to quash the subpoena, arguing that the requested information was irrelevant and burdensome.
The court found that the information was relevant to when the plaintiffs learned that Sater owned Litco and to the credibility of witnesses in a sanctions motion. It also found that the subpoena sought only a limited amount of information. Litco could not challenge the subpoena based on relevance or undue burden because it was not the subpoena’s recipient, and Litco did not establish a privilege or privacy interest in the information.
In the City of Almaty v. Mukhtar Ablyazov matter, Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker denied Litco’s motion to quash at Doc. No. 1211.
The detailed version
- City of Almaty, Kazahkstan v. Mukhtar Ablyazov · No. 1:15-cv-05345
- John Koeltl
- Mar. 9, 2020
Background
Non-party Litco LLC moved to quash a subpoena served by the parties on Latham & Watkins LLP. The subpoena sought a nondisclosure agreement between Latham and Litco, communications about negotiating or executing that agreement or conducted under it, and communications concerning the identity of Litco’s owners, members, employees, or agents. Latham did not move to quash the subpoena.
Legal standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 permits subpoenas to non-parties for documents and information. Discovery is limited to nonprivileged information relevant to a party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. The court must quash or modify a subpoena in specified circumstances, including when it requires disclosure of privileged material or subjects the recipient to undue burden. A non-recipient generally has standing—the legal ability to ask the court for relief—only when the subpoena seeks that person’s privilege, privacy interest, or proprietary interest. A non-recipient generally cannot object based on relevance or undue burden.
Court’s analysis
Litco argued that the subpoena was burdensome because it sought irrelevant information beyond the permitted scope of discovery. The court rejected that argument. It found that the information was relevant to the timing of the plaintiffs’ knowledge that Sater owned Litco and to the credibility of fact witnesses, making it relevant to a sanctions motion pending before the court. The court also found that the subpoena sought a limited amount of information that was not burdensome. In addition, because Litco was not the subpoena recipient, it lacked standing to challenge the subpoena on relevance or undue-burden grounds.
Litco did not claim that the information was privileged or that it had a privacy interest in the information. The court further stated that Litco had waived any right it might have had in the requested information because Litco’s counsel had testified extensively about the agreement and communications at a court hearing. The court therefore found no basis to quash the subpoena.
Disposition
The court denied Litco’s motion to quash at Doc. No. 1211. The opinion was signed by United States Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.