Lee v. Truist Bank
- John Koeltl
- 1:20-cv-01816
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Lee v. Truist Bank, Judge Koeltl granted an application, ordered a conference, and required the parties to meet about unresolved discovery issues.
Sharon Lee and the defendants were affected by the order requiring them to meet and confer, prepare a joint agenda for unresolved issues, and attend a discovery conference.
What happened
In Lee v. Truist Bank, Sharon Lee’s counsel submitted a letter about an anticipated request to compel defendants to provide additional discovery in her employment-discrimination case. The letter says Lee alleges that defendants fired her in retaliation for complaints about discrimination based on gender, age, and race.
The disputed discovery concerned records about potential comparators, discrimination or retaliation complaints, and adverse actions against other employees after protected complaints. The defendants objected that the requests were overbroad, irrelevant, disproportionate, vague, privileged, or invasive of nonparties’ privacy. The letter says the parties resolved or narrowed some disputes but still had unresolved issues.
Judge John G. Koeltl granted the application and ordered the parties to appear for a conference on March 10, 2021. He directed them to meet and confer about the issues in ECF 41 and ECF 43 and to submit a joint agenda by March 8 for any issues they could not resolve. The order states that ECF 41 was resolved; it does not state a final ruling on the anticipated motion to compel.
The detailed version
- Lee v. Truist Bank · No. 1:20-cv-01816
- John Koeltl
- Feb. 24, 2021
Background
The opinion text contains a February 12, 2021 letter from counsel for Sharon Lee concerning an anticipated motion to compel discovery from Truist Bank, SunTrust Bank, Inc., GenSpring Family Offices, Thomas Carrol, and Robert Weiss. The letter describes Lee’s case as an employment-discrimination action in which she alleges that defendants fired her in retaliation for protected complaints concerning gender, age, and race discrimination.
The letter states that Lee had served document requests and that the parties had held three telephone conferences to discuss defendants’ responses. According to the letter, some disputes were resolved or narrowed, while others remained.
Discovery Disputes Described in the Letter
The first dispute concerned Requests 10–12, seeking documents about five employees Lee identified as comparators: Keith Cho, Nathan Willis, Jennifer Cobleigh, Robert Zimmerman, and Niles Greene. The requested material included records concerning their work performance, changes to their employment terms and conditions, and disciplinary actions. Defendants objected that the requests were overbroad, insufficiently limited in time and scope, irrelevant, disproportionate, unduly invasive, and implicating nonparties’ privacy interests. The letter states that defendants also disputed whether the individuals were proper comparators.
The second dispute concerned Requests 37 and 40, seeking records of complaints, reports, investigations, and related documents involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, unfair treatment, or unequal treatment at GenSpring Family Offices or the Private Wealth Management Department at SunTrust or Truist. Defendants agreed to produce complaints against five identified individuals for 2015 through 2020, but Lee’s counsel proposed a broader compromise covering complaints against Managing Directors and above from August 1, 2014, through December 18, 2019. The letter describes the requested material as relevant to Lee’s claims of disparate treatment and retaliation.
The third dispute concerned Request 43, seeking documents about adverse actions against employees or former employees within three months of protected complaints. The request covered actions including discipline, termination, legal claims, threats to file legal claims, and challenges to unemployment decisions. Defendants refused to produce nonprivileged responsive documents based on objections including vagueness, overbreadth, lack of relevance, disproportionality, privacy, attorney-client privilege, and work-product protection.
These descriptions reflect the positions presented in Lee’s counsel’s letter. The text provided does not contain a judicial analysis deciding whether the requested discovery was proper.
Order
The court states: “Application granted.” It orders the parties to appear for a conference on March 10, 2021, at 11:00 a.m. Before the conference, the parties must meet and confer about the issues in ECF 41 and ECF 43. For issues they cannot resolve, they must submit a joint agenda by March 8 identifying the issues requiring court intervention and each party’s position with supporting evidence or case law. The order also states, “ECF 41 resolved.”
The provided text does not state that the anticipated motion to compel was granted or denied, and it does not resolve the discovery requests on their merits.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.