Bonnie Verburg v. Scholastic Inc.
- John Koeltl
- 1:19-cv-10837
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Bonnie Verburg v. Scholastic Inc., Judge Gorenstein set discovery deadlines and addressed possible subpoena service for nonparty Dav Pilkey.
Bonnie Verburg, the defendants, and nonparty Dav Pilkey, as to document production, subpoena service, depositions, and the case schedule.
What happened
In Bonnie Verburg v. Scholastic Inc., the court set deadlines for defendants to produce electronically stored information by January 15, 2021, and other documents by February 5, 2021. The parties could change those deadlines by written agreement.
The court also allowed Bonnie Verburg to seek an order approving service of a subpoena on an attorney for nonparty Dav Pilkey if Pilkey would not agree to that arrangement. The court explained that this would address service only, not the timing of Pilkey’s deposition.
Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein also set deadlines for fact discovery, expert reports, expert discovery, possible summary-judgment permission, and the joint pretrial order. The order did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Bonnie Verburg v. Scholastic Inc. · No. 1:19-cv-10837
- John Koeltl
- Jan. 15, 2021
Background
The court reviewed Bonnie Verburg’s letter at Docket 52 and the defendants’ response at Docket 53. The order concerned document production, possible subpoena service on behalf of nonparty Dav Pilkey, and the schedule for completing discovery and preparing for trial.
Rulings
The court ordered production of electronically stored information by January 15, 2021, and production of non-electronically stored documents by February 5, 2021. The parties could change these deadlines through a written agreement without obtaining another court order. If the defendants needed more time and could not reach an agreement, they could apply for an extension under paragraph 2.A. of the court’s individual practices, but they also had to file an affidavit from someone with personal knowledge describing the efforts made to meet the deadline.
The court stated that the defendants had not addressed the effect of Mr. Warshaw’s statement that the defendants were authorized to accept service of a subpoena for nonparty Dav Pilkey. If Pilkey would not agree that Mr. Warshaw or another attorney could accept service, Verburg could seek an order providing that serving the subpoena on Mr. Warshaw would constitute proper service on Pilkey. The court identified Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 45(b)(3) and 4(f)(3), and 28 U.S.C. § 1783(b), as the relevant provisions. The court noted that such an order would resolve only the service issue, not the timing of the deposition, which should be arranged by Verburg’s counsel and Pilkey’s new counsel. If an application for alternative service became necessary, the court waived its pre-motion conference requirement and allowed the application to be made by letter. The court assumed, for purposes of the cited rule, that Pilkey was a United States national or resident.
The court ordered that fact discovery, including depositions, be completed by March 1,
- Initial expert reports, if any, were due April 2, 2021; rebuttal expert reports were due April 23, 2021; and expert discovery was to be completed by June 1,
- Any request to Judge Koeltl for permission to file a summary-judgment motion was due June 8,
- If no such request was filed, the joint pretrial order was due July 8,
- If a request was filed, the joint pretrial order was due 30 days after the decision on the summary-judgment motion.
Effect of the Order
This was a case-management and discovery order. It did not rule on the merits of Verburg’s claims or the defendants’ defenses. Its practical effect was to set production and litigation deadlines and provide a possible procedure for seeking approval of alternative subpoena service.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.