Local 3621, EMS Officers Union, DC-37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO v. City of New York
- Lewis Liman
- 1:18-cv-04476
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Local 3621 v. City of New York, Judge Cave denied plaintiffs’ second request to reconsider an earlier order concerning defendants’ sanctions motion.
The plaintiffs’ second request to reconsider the February 11, 2021 order was denied, and the letter motion was closed.
What happened
Local 3621, EMS Officers Union, DC-37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO and other plaintiffs filed a letter asking for discovery. The court treated it as a second request to reconsider its February 11, 2021 order.
The plaintiffs argued that the defendants had fabricated the basis for the relief granted in that earlier order. They sought to have the defendants’ sanctions motion treated as fully denied rather than granted in part, but the court found that they were repeating arguments from their first reconsideration motion.
Judge Sarah L. Cave denied the motion because reconsideration is not a way to repeat rejected arguments or present facts and arguments that could have been raised earlier. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the letter motion.
The detailed version
- Local 3621, EMS Officers Union, DC-37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO v. City of New York · No. 1:18-cv-04476
- Lewis Liman
- Feb. 17, 2021
Background
Plaintiffs filed a “Letter Motion for Discovery.” The court construed the filing as a second motion for reconsideration of the court’s February 11, 2021 order. Plaintiffs had already filed a first motion for reconsideration on February 12, 2021.
The earlier reconsideration request and the new motion sought the same relief: dismissal of defendants’ motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37 and a correction of the February 11 order to show that defendants’ request for sanctions had been denied in full rather than granted in part.
Arguments and Analysis
Plaintiffs said they were bringing a motion to reargue, not a motion for reconsideration, and argued that defendants had “fabricated” the underlying basis for the relief awarded in the February 11 order. The court treated that argument as another request for reconsideration.
The court explained that reconsideration is not an opportunity to repeat arguments previously rejected or to raise new facts, issues, or arguments that could have been presented earlier. The court found that plaintiffs repeated the arguments from their first reconsideration motion. It also found that plaintiffs’ effort to characterize later correspondence with defendants’ counsel as “new facts” was not a proper basis for reconsideration.
Ruling
Judge Sarah L. Cave denied the motion. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the letter motion at ECF No. 320. The opinion does not state that the February 11 order was changed.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.