Medina v. City Of New York
- Alison Nathan
- 1:19-cv-09412
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Medina v. City of New York, Magistrate Judge Wang resolved discovery disputes over a proposed protective order.
The parties to Tomas Medina’s lawsuit against the City of New York and the other defendants, particularly those involved in producing or challenging confidentiality designations for disciplinary files, personnel files, body-camera footage, and police policy and training documents.
What happened
In Tomas Medina v. City of New York, et al., the parties jointly asked to change the court’s standard protective order and raised disputes about handling several types of records before document discovery had substantially begun.
The court accepted the agreed changes, allowed certain New York City personnel files, body-camera footage, and parts of police policies and training documents to be marked confidential, and set procedures for challenging those designations. The court also required defendants to file any motion about disciplinary files available through public-records requests by October 5, 2020, while requiring document production to continue.
Judge Ona T. Wang ordered the parties to file a revised protective order by September 23, 2020, warned that unsupported confidentiality designations or future discovery failures could lead to cost awards, and directed the clerk to close the letter motion.
The detailed version
- Medina v. City Of New York · No. 1:19-cv-09412
- Alison Nathan
- Sept. 16, 2020
Background
The court considered the parties’ joint letter motion identifying disputes about a proposed protective order. The opinion stated that the disputes were part of a series of discovery disputes occurring before document discovery had begun in earnest.
Rulings
- The court noted that the parties’ joint requests to modify the court’s standard protective order were consented to by all parties, so there was no dispute about those modifications. - If the parties could not agree about disciplinary files obtainable through the Freedom of Information Law or the Freedom of Information Act, the defendants had to file a protective-order motion by October 5, 2020. The motion and opposition had to address whether publicly obtainable documents are considered publicly available and whether a party may designate a publicly available document as confidential. The court stated that such a motion could not delay document production; the documents had to be produced on time and could be temporarily marked confidential. - New York City employee personnel files, other than disciplinary files obtainable through public-records requests, could be designated confidential. Challenges to confidentiality designations would follow paragraph 3 of the court’s form protective order, which had been incorporated into the parties’ proposed order. - Defendants could designate body-camera footage and portions of New York Police Department policy and training documents as confidential, but had to produce them on time. Challenges would also follow paragraph 3 of the form protective order.
Warnings and disposition
Judge Ona T. Wang warned that if defendants designated documents as confidential without a good-faith basis, the court could allocate costs under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 16 and 37, 28 U.S.C. § 1927, or the court’s inherent authority. The court also warned that future failures to cooperate in discovery could result in cost allocation under the same authorities. The parties were directed to file a revised proposed protective order consistent with the order by September 23, 2020. The clerk was requested to close ECF 110, the letter motion.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.