Komatsu v. The City of New York
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:18-cv-03698
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Komatsu v. City of New York, Magistrate Judge Gorenstein denied reconsideration requests and partly denied defendants’ request for additional protections for mistakenly produced documents.
Towaki Komatsu and the defendants, particularly regarding the use and disclosure of produced documents, compliance with prior court orders, and any possible request for sanctions.
What happened
Komatsu v. The City of New York involved several letters about prior court orders, confidentiality, and the plaintiff’s obligation to comply with an earlier deadline.
The court denied one request for reconsideration. It denied defendants’ request for the additional provisions in their proposed order concerning mistakenly produced protected material, while issuing a separate order with simpler procedures. It also said another reconsideration request would be denied on the merits but was moot because the deadline had already passed.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein explained that objecting to a court order does not suspend the duty to follow it unless a court issues a stay. He allowed defendants to seek an appropriate sanction if the plaintiff had failed to comply.
The detailed version
- Komatsu v. The City of New York · No. 1:18-cv-03698
- Lorna Schofield
- Jan. 29, 2021
Background
The court addressed several letters from the parties concerning earlier orders. The letters sought reconsideration of prior rulings, an additional order concerning mistakenly produced protected material under Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d), and relief from a January 15, 2021 deadline imposed by an earlier order.
A confidentiality order already prohibited public disclosure of documents marked confidential unless a court authorized disclosure. That order also contained procedures for objecting after documents were produced.
Rulings
The court denied the request to reconsider Docket #473.
As to defendants’ request for a Rule 502(d) order, the court found defendants’ proposed order unnecessarily complicated and said it placed an unwarranted burden on the receiving party to identify material covered by protection claims. The court nevertheless found that some procedure was appropriate if protected material was produced by mistake. It therefore separately issued an order with simpler procedures. To the extent defendants sought the additional provisions in their proposed order, the court denied that request.
The court stated that the request to reconsider Docket #450 would be denied on the merits, but also held that the request was moot because the January 15 deadline had already passed when the request was made. The court rejected the idea that an objection, appeal, reconsideration motion, or request for a stay automatically suspends the obligation to comply with an order. It explained that only an actual stay would do so, and that no court had issued a stay. If the plaintiff had failed to comply with Docket #450 or another court order, defendants were permitted to apply for an appropriate sanction.
Effect
The order resolved the letters and left the earlier compliance obligations in place. It did not state that a sanction had been imposed; it only allowed defendants to seek one if noncompliance had occurred. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein directed defendants to email the order to the plaintiff.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.