Powers v. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:20-cv-02625
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Powers v. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Judge Schofield denied Powers’s requests for another corporate deposition and privileged-email disclosure.
Scott Powers and the defendants, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Powers could not take the additional corporate deposition, and the disputed email was protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege.
What happened
In Powers v. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Scott Powers asked to take another deposition of the cancer center’s corporate witness about information-technology matters and sought disclosure of an email that defendants withheld as privileged.
The court found that Powers’s lawyer had questioned the corporate witness for more than six hours and that she was adequately prepared to discuss the information-technology topics. The court also reviewed the disputed email privately and under seal.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield denied the request for another corporate deposition because it was disproportionate to the needs of the case. The court treated Powers’s pre-motion letter about the email as a motion to compel and denied it, finding that attorney-client privilege protected the email from disclosure.
The detailed version
- Powers v. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center · No. 1:20-cv-02625
- Lorna Schofield
- Dec. 11, 2020
Background
Scott Powers filed letters asking the court to extend the fact-discovery deadline and to require Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to produce another witness under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). That rule allows a party to depose an organization through one or more representatives prepared to provide knowledgeable and binding answers about stated subjects. Powers sought another witness prepared to testify about certain information-technology matters.
Powers also filed a pre-motion letter anticipating a motion to compel production of documents that he argued defendants had improperly withheld under privilege. The specific document identified was an email written by Dr. Sofocleous and addressed to Jorge Capote, identified in the opinion as Senior Director of Patient Relations, and the Legal Department. Defendants clarified that they claimed attorney-client privilege for the email, rather than New York’s medical peer-review privilege. The court reviewed the email privately and under seal.
Rulings
The court denied Powers’s request to conduct an additional Rule 30(b)(6) deposition. It stated that Powers’s counsel had questioned Memorial Sloan Kettering’s corporate witness for more than six hours, that the witness was sufficiently prepared to testify about information-technology matters, and that another deposition would be disproportionate to the needs of the case. The court relied on the principle that discovery must be proportional, not unduly burdensome or duplicative, and described with reasonable particularity.
The court construed Powers’s November 20, 2020, pre-motion letter about the email as a motion to compel and denied that motion. Judge Lorna G. Schofield concluded that defendants had properly invoked attorney-client privilege, which protects confidential communications between a client and counsel made to obtain or provide legal assistance, and that the privilege protected the email from disclosure.
Disposition
The request for an additional corporate deposition was denied. The motion to compel production of the email was also denied.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.