Williams v. Aaron Johnson
- Barbara Moses
- 1:17-cv-02351
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Williams v. City of New York, Judge Moses adjourned pretrial deadlines and ordered defendants to respond to plaintiff’s proposed motions.
Jamal Williams, the defendants, their lawyers, and the parties’ pretrial schedule were affected. Defendants had to respond by January 4, 2021, while the joint-pretrial-order deadline and related deadlines were adjourned indefinitely.
What happened
Williams v. City of New York, heard by Judge Barbara C. Moses, involved plaintiff Jamal Williams’s claims arising from his 2015 arrest and prosecution. The filing said defendants had recently produced a video that plaintiff’s lawyer believed contradicted plaintiff’s earlier statements and had been withheld for years.
Williams said he intended to ask permission to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be brought again, and to seek sanctions and costs for the alleged discovery violation. He also asked the court to pause existing deadlines while those requests were considered.
In Williams v. City of New York, Judge Barbara C. Moses ordered defendants to respond to the letter-motion by January 4, 2021, and adjourned the deadline for the joint pretrial order and related materials indefinitely. The court did not decide the proposed dismissal or sanctions requests in this order.
The detailed version
- Williams v. Aaron Johnson · No. 1:17-cv-02351
- Barbara Moses
- Dec. 30, 2020
Background
The filing concerned an action brought by Jamal Williams after his arrest in his apartment on November 18, 2015, during execution of a search warrant. The filing stated that Williams and his brother Andrew Hudson were arrested and charged with possessing a handgun and marijuana, that the handgun and ammunition were found in Hudson’s bedroom, and that no contraband was found in Williams’s bedroom. It also stated that the prosecution lasted about seven months before the New York District Attorney moved to dismiss because the case could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The filing said defendants had produced a short cellphone video for the first time on December 29, 2020. According to the filing, the video appeared to show Williams with a handgun similar to the one recovered during the search. The filing further said defendants acknowledged that defendant Johnson had possessed the video before the search and that the City had obtained it no later than September 27, 2017. Plaintiff’s lawyer argued that the video should have been disclosed during discovery and that defendants had not identified it or provided a privilege log.
Requests in the Letter-Motion
Williams’s lawyer said Williams wished to seek voluntary dismissal of the action with prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(2). The lawyer also said plaintiff intended to seek sanctions and costs under Rule 37 for the alleged deliberate withholding of discovery. The filing requested that all pending deadlines be postponed while those requests were considered. It stated that, if dismissal were denied, counsel would separately seek permission to withdraw.
These matters were requests described in the letter. The December 30 order did not decide whether dismissal should be granted, whether sanctions should be imposed, or whether counsel could withdraw.
Order
Judge Barbara C. Moses ordered defendants to respond to plaintiff’s letter-motion no later than January 4, 2021. She also adjourned the January 4 deadline for submitting the joint pretrial order and related materials indefinitely. The order did not otherwise rule on the proposed motions or the underlying claims.
Classification
This is a procedural order because it addressed response and scheduling matters without deciding the merits of the claims or the requested dismissal and sanctions.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.