Vasquez v. Fredericks
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:15-cv-09528
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Vasquez v. Fredericks, Judge Karas denied Kim Vasquez’s motion to reconsider an earlier summary-judgment ruling.
Kim Vasquez, whose motion seeking to reopen the court’s earlier summary-judgment decision was denied; the defendants’ earlier judgment was not reopened.
What happened
In Kim Vasquez v. P.O. John Fredericks, et al., the court considered Vasquez’s request to reopen its June 8, 2018 decision granting the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
Vasquez argued that the defendants had used exhibits they did not disclose during discovery and that some police records were not properly marked. The court found the first argument was filed nearly three years too late and the second was not filed within a reasonable time.
Judge Kenneth M. Karas denied the motion for reconsideration. The court also said the motion identified technical issues, not factual disputes or substantive inaccuracies that would justify reopening the judgment.
The detailed version
- Vasquez v. Fredericks · No. 7:15-cv-09528
- Kenneth Karas
- Apr. 22, 2021
Background
The court had granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment in an opinion and order issued June 8, 2018. Kim Vasquez later filed a letter that the court treated as a motion for reconsideration under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), which allows a court to provide relief from a judgment in limited circumstances.
Arguments
Vasquez made two arguments. First, he claimed that the defendants attached exhibits to their summary-judgment motion that they had not disclosed during discovery. The court treated this as a request for relief based on “excusable neglect” under Rule 60(b)(1). Rule 60(c)(1) requires such a request to be filed no more than one year after judgment. Because Vasquez’s filing was dated April 13, 2021—nearly three years after the June 8, 2018 decision—the court found the request untimely. The court also stated that it would reject the excusable-neglect argument on its merits even if it had been timely.
Second, Vasquez argued that the defendants had submitted inauthentic police-record exhibits because the documents were not marked consistently with New York Criminal Procedure Law § 160.50(5)(b)(i). The court treated this as a request for relief under Rule 60(b)(6), which covers other reasons that might justify relief. The court held that this argument was filed more than 34 months after the challenged decision and was not made within a reasonable time.
Court’s reasoning
The court further noted that Vasquez’s motion was entirely technical. It did not claim that earlier disclosure of the exhibits would have enabled him to identify additional factual disputes, and it did not claim that the police-record exhibits contained substantive inaccuracies. The court concluded that the interest in preserving the finality of judgments outweighed any benefit of reconsideration.
Disposition
Judge Kenneth M. Karas denied Vasquez’s motion for reconsideration. The clerk was directed to mail a copy of the order to Vasquez.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.