The Barter House, Inc. v. Infinity Spirits LLC
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:17-cv-09276
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In The Barter House v. Infinity Spirits, Judge Engelmayer granted plaintiffs’ motions in part and denied them in part as moot, while denying Hopkins’s motions.
The rulings directly affected The Barter House, Inc., Brian DiMarco, and Brian Hopkins in preparation for trial. The corporate defendants had defaulted and were not the remaining defendant in the liability phase described by the court.
What happened
The Barter House, Inc. and Brian DiMarco sued Brian Hopkins and corporate defendants over breach of contract, fraud, and unjust enrichment. The corporate defendants had defaulted, leaving Hopkins as the only remaining defendant for the liability phase of the planned trial.
The court granted the plaintiffs’ request to exclude evidence about their state liquor licenses and Hopkins’s proposed expert testimony. The court denied Hopkins’s request to exclude deposition testimony about whether he and certain corporate defendants held assets in the United States. It also allowed evidence about Hopkins’s trademark-ownership statements for impeachment only. The court denied Hopkins’s broad effort to exclude several exhibits, while reserving some decisions about additional materials and trial admissibility. Part of the plaintiffs’ motions was denied as moot because it concerned dismissed counterclaims.
Judge Engelmayer concluded by granting in part and denying in part as moot the plaintiffs’ outstanding motions in limine and denying Hopkins’s outstanding motions in limine.
The detailed version
- The Barter House, Inc. v. Infinity Spirits LLC · No. 1:17-cv-09276
- Paul Engelmayer
- Jan. 28, 2021
Background
The court addressed the parties’ remaining motions in limine, which are pretrial requests asking the court to decide whether particular evidence may be presented at trial. Trial was expected later in the year, subject to pandemic conditions. The trial would concern The Barter House, Inc. and Brian DiMarco’s claims for breach of contract, fraud, and unjust enrichment against Brian Hopkins. The corporate defendants had defaulted, making Hopkins the sole remaining defendant in the liability phase.
The court had previously resolved five motions in a bench ruling. This opinion resolved the remaining issues presented in the parties’ motions.
Plaintiffs’ motions
The plaintiffs asked the court to prevent Hopkins from presenting evidence about whether they held state liquor licenses. The court granted that motion. It relied on its earlier ruling that the plaintiffs’ compliance with state liquor-licensing requirements was irrelevant to a contract counterclaim, and held that the same reasoning applied to the plaintiffs’ contract claim. Hopkins had not identified a theory making the licensing evidence relevant to the fraud or unjust-enrichment claims either.
The plaintiffs also asked the court to exclude Hopkins’s proposed expert testimony. The court granted that motion for two independent reasons. First, the proposed experts had not been disclosed during the court-ordered period for expert discovery, and Hopkins had not provided a reasonable explanation for the late disclosure. Allowing the late disclosure would have delayed the case and prejudiced the plaintiffs, who might have needed to obtain rebuttal experts. Second, the proposed testimony was irrelevant: three proposed experts apparently would have testified about DiMarco’s liquor license, and the court had already excluded that subject; the proposed computer-forensics testimony concerned the timing of documents that the court had also already excluded.
The court did not rely separately on other defense failures involving the joint pretrial order and a related conference because it assumed those failures were connected to personal issues affecting former defense counsel.
Hopkins’s motions
Hopkins asked the court to exclude deposition testimony indicating that, with narrow exceptions, he and certain now-defaulted corporate defendants did not hold assets in the United States. The court denied that motion. It held that the testimony could be used to challenge Hopkins’s credibility if evidence showed that he had made contrary statements to DiMarco. The court also noted that Hopkins had put DiMarco’s credibility at issue by asserting that DiMarco should have recognized Hopkins as a pathological liar when entering agreements with him.
Hopkins separately sought to exclude evidence concerning his representations in a Distribution Agreement about his ownership of certain trademarks. The court found the request moot to the extent the evidence had been offered to support a defense to the dismissed counterclaims. But the court held that the allegedly false representations could be admitted for impeachment, meaning to challenge credibility, and only for that limited purpose.
Hopkins also objected to several exhibits as incomplete without additional pages or attachments. The court stated that it presently intended to receive the exhibits as offered by the plaintiffs but reserved judgment on whether the additional materials Hopkins identified had an independent basis for admission. The court denied Hopkins’s generalized objection that other exhibits were unfairly prejudicial because he had not specifically applied the evidence rule governing unfair prejudice to each exhibit. The court nevertheless reserved judgment until trial on whether those exhibits would be admissible.
Disposition
Judge Engelmayer’s conclusion states that the court granted in part and denied in part as moot the plaintiffs’ outstanding motions in limine, and denied Brian Hopkins’s outstanding motions in limine. The clerk was directed to terminate the motions pending at docket numbers 390 and 397.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.