Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc.
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-01222
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair, Judge Cronan granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs’ request to answer late admission requests.
The order affected the nine plaintiffs and the defendants in the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law case. Seven plaintiffs received permission to respond late to the requests for admission; two did not, and the requests as to them were deemed admitted. The defendants received additional time for discovery.
What happened
Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc. is a wage-and-hour case under federal and New York law. The plaintiffs missed the deadline to answer the defendants’ requests to admit facts about their pay and work hours, partly because the parties were discussing settlement.
The plaintiffs asked for permission to respond late. The defendants argued that allowing late responses would require additional depositions and subpoenas. The court found that the requests concerned important issues and that the defendants had not shown enough prejudice, especially because those discovery steps had not yet occurred.
Judge John P. Cronan granted in part and denied in part the motion. Seven plaintiffs were allowed to provide late responses, with three required to serve their responses within three days; the requests would otherwise be treated as admitted. The motion was denied as to two plaintiffs, whose requests were deemed admitted. The court also extended the discovery deadline to June 17, 2021.
The detailed version
- Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-01222
- John Cronan
- Mar. 29, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs brought claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. The defendants served requests for admission on September 29, 2020. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36, a party generally must answer or object to such requests within thirty days; otherwise, the matters may be treated as admitted.
The plaintiffs did not respond by the October 29, 2020 deadline. Plaintiffs’ counsel said that he delayed responding because he needed to discuss the requests with each plaintiff and because the parties were involved in settlement discussions. After those discussions failed, counsel asked the defendants to accept late responses, but the defendants refused. The plaintiffs then moved for a retroactive extension of time.
Court’s analysis
The court considered whether allowing late responses would help resolve the case on its merits, whether the defendants would be prejudiced, and whether the delay reflected bad faith. The requests concerned central wage-and-hour issues, including whether the plaintiffs earned more than $600 per week, worked more than forty hours per week, and received the required overtime pay. The court stated that admissions on those issues could essentially decide liability for the defendants.
The court rejected the defendants’ claim of extensive prejudice. The defendants said they would need to depose the individual plaintiffs and issue subpoenas to nonparties if late responses were allowed. But the court understood that those depositions had not occurred and the subpoenas had not been served. The court also found no reason to conclude that the plaintiffs acted in bad faith, although it described their reliance on settlement discussions as flawed and troubling.
Ruling
The court granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion to extend the response deadline. It granted permission for seven plaintiffs to submit late responses. Four plaintiffs had proposed responses attached to the motion: Josefina Gomez Gonzalez, Edgar Fernando Velicela, Victor Manuel Disla, and Edgar Patricio Velicela. For three additional plaintiffs—John Jairo Velicela, Marco Tulio Saldanha, and Jose Armando Sambula—the court directed that responses be served within three days after the order was filed or the requests would be deemed admitted.
The court denied the motion as to Jose Gino Desouza and Eduardo Fernando Macancela Chedraui because they had not responded and counsel gave no justification for their continued failure to do so. The requests for admission as to those two plaintiffs therefore would be deemed admitted. The court also extended the discovery deadline to June 17, 2021, and directed the clerk to terminate the motion at Docket 57.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.