Galgano v. County of Putnam, New York
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:16-cv-03572
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Galgano v. County of Putnam, Judge Karas ordered defendants to respond to a request concerning marital texts and alleged privilege.
Helen Galgano, George Galgano, and the defendants were affected by the court’s order requiring defendants to respond to the request concerning marital communications.
What happened
In Galgano v. County of Putnam, Helen Galgano’s lawyer asked the court to stop defendants from sharing her private communications with her husband. The request concerned text messages recovered from George Galgano’s phone during a 2014 raid and a pending challenge to a magistrate judge’s ruling about confidential marital communications.
Helen Galgano’s lawyer argued that New York law protects confidential communications between spouses and that the text messages should be presumed private. The letter said defendants had continued sharing the messages and had asked George Galgano to admit that the messages were authentic.
Judge Kenneth M. Karas did not decide whether the messages were privileged or order defendants to stop sharing them in this document. Instead, the court ordered defendants to respond to the letter by April 6, 2021.
The detailed version
- Galgano v. County of Putnam, New York · No. 7:16-cv-03572
- Kenneth Karas
- Apr. 1, 2021
Background
This document is a letter from Bradley D. Simon, counsel for Helen Galgano, to Judge Kenneth M. Karas. The letter states that Helen Galgano is George Galgano’s wife and is not a party to the litigation. It concerns her request to prevent disclosure of confidential marital communications and her pending appeal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72 from a magistrate judge’s order on that issue.
Request and Arguments
The letter says the parties had made progress toward resolving concerns about intercepted phone calls but that marital text messages had also been produced in the litigation. It states that defendants sent George Galgano’s counsel a March 8, 2021 letter attached to a communication between Helen and George Galgano. It also says defendants served George Galgano with a request to admit the authenticity of what appeared to be all text messages between the spouses.
Counsel argued that New York’s marital-communications privilege protects confidential communications between spouses. The letter asserted that messages retrieved from George Galgano’s personal phone should be presumed confidential and that Helen Galgano had never waived the privilege. Counsel asked the court to direct defendants to immediately stop publicizing the marital communications, at least until the pending motion was resolved.
Court Action
Judge Kenneth M. Karas ordered defendants to respond to the letter by April 6, 2021. The text provided does not show a ruling granting or denying the request to stop disclosure, does not decide whether the text messages are privileged, and does not state the result of the pending Rule 72 appeal.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.