Koczwara v. Nationwide General Insurance Company
- Barbara Moses
- 1:20-cv-02579
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Koczwara v. Nationwide, Judge Moses granted in part a discovery motion, limiting discovery and extending deadlines.
Stanislaw Koczwara and Nationwide General Insurance Company, whose remaining discovery was limited and whose case schedule was revised.
What happened
In Koczwara v. Nationwide General Insurance Company, the parties had not completed fact discovery by their September 8, 2020 deadline. The court said both sides contributed to the delay: Nationwide responded slowly and served its own discovery late, while Stanislaw Koczwara waited six weeks after the deadline to seek court help and changed his deposition request.
Koczwara asked to extend discovery for his benefit and to bar Nationwide from conducting any fact discovery. The court granted his motion in part. Nationwide could conduct limited document discovery, certain subpoenas, and two depositions; Koczwara did not have to answer Nationwide's recently served interrogatories, and he also was limited to two depositions.
Judge Moses reset the deadlines, requiring remaining fact discovery by December 11, 2020, all discovery by February 22, 2021, and setting later dates for expert disclosures, possible summary-judgment motions, and a status conference.
The detailed version
- Koczwara v. Nationwide General Insurance Company · No. 1:20-cv-02579
- Barbara Moses
- Oct. 30, 2020
Background
The parties consented to have a magistrate judge conduct all proceedings. A prior scheduling order set September 8, 2020 as the deadline for fact discovery. Stanislaw Koczwara filed a letter-motion concerning discovery, followed by responses and replies from both sides.
The court found that both parties contributed to the failure to complete fact discovery. Nationwide was slow to respond to Koczwara's discovery requests and did not serve its own discovery requests until after Koczwara filed his motion. Koczwara had noticed a deposition of Nationwide under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6), which allows an organization to choose the witness who testifies for it, but later advised Nationwide that he wanted a deposition of a specific individual who had not previously been identified. Koczwara also waited until October 21, 2020—six weeks after the discovery deadline—to seek judicial intervention.
Ruling
The court granted in part Koczwara's letter-motion. It did not entirely bar Nationwide from conducting fact discovery. Instead, Nationwide was limited to party document requests served on or about October 22, 2020; non-party document subpoenas, to the extent the requested documents fell within the permissible scope of discovery under Rule 26(b)(1); and a total of two depositions. Koczwara was not required to answer Nationwide's recently served interrogatories and was also limited to two depositions.
The court revised the schedule as follows:
- Remaining fact discovery, including depositions, had to be completed by December 11,
- - Expert disclosures were due January 11, 2021; expert evidence used solely to contradict or rebut the opposing party's evidence was due February 1, 2021; and expert depositions had to be completed by February 22,
- - All discovery had to be completed by February 22,
- - Any summary-judgment motions were due 30 days after discovery closed. - The proposed joint pretrial order was due 30 days after discovery closed, or, if summary-judgment motions were filed, 30 days after the court decided those motions. - Judge Moses set a post-discovery status conference for February 25, 2021, and required a joint status letter by February 23, 2021.
The order also allowed depositions to occur remotely during the COVID-19 public health emergency, subject to specified federal procedural requirements. It required prompt applications for extensions, timely service of discovery, good-faith efforts to resolve discovery disputes before seeking court intervention, and compliance with federal discovery rules. It further entered an order under Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d) stating that inadvertent disclosure of privileged or protected material would not waive the privilege or protection.
The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motion after it had been granted in part.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.