United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Collector's Coffee Inc.
- Victor Marrero
- 1:19-cv-04355
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In SEC v. Collector's Coffee, Judge Gorenstein adjourned nonparty John Culotta’s deadline to respond to a motion to compel pending further court order.
Nonparty John Culotta’s deadline to respond to Mykalai Kontilai’s motion to compel was adjourned pending further court order.
What happened
SEC v. Collector's Coffee, Inc. concerned nonparty John Culotta’s request to pause briefing on a motion seeking to compel him to appear for a second deposition. The request was based on possible overlap with an earlier motion involving former attorneys for Gail Holt.
Culotta argued that the earlier motion could resolve whether Holt waived attorney-client privilege or whether an exception for communications related to wrongdoing applied. He said those rulings could make the issues in the motion involving him unnecessary to decide.
Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein adjourned Culotta’s deadline to respond pending further order of the court. The order did not decide whether the privilege was waived, whether the exception applied, or whether Culotta had to appear for another deposition.
The detailed version
- United States Securities and Exchange Commission v. Collector's Coffee Inc. · No. 1:19-cv-04355
- Victor Marrero
- Apr. 15, 2021
Background
The filing concerned nonparty John Culotta’s renewed request to suspend briefing on defendant Mykalai Kontilai’s motion to compel Culotta to appear for a second deposition. Culotta sought to defer the briefing until the court decided Kontilai’s earlier motion to compel testimony from former attorneys for Gail Holt.
Culotta’s filing stated that the two motions raised the same legal and factual issues concerning whether Holt waived the attorney-client privilege and whether the crime-fraud exception applied. Culotta took no position on those issues and stated that he would follow the court’s decision. The filing also asserted that a ruling finding waiver or applying the crime-fraud exception could make it unnecessary to decide whether communications involving Culotta and Holt remained privileged.
Ruling
The court did not decide the privilege, crime-fraud-exception, or deposition issues. Instead, Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein ordered that Mr. Culotta’s deadline to respond be adjourned pending further order of the court. The text does not state that the motion to compel was granted or denied.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.