Collymore v. City Of New York
- Laura Swain
- 1:16-cv-08270
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Collymore v. City of New York, Judge Swain overruled Collymore’s objections to the magistrate judge’s discovery orders.
Robin Collymore’s objections were overruled, and the discovery orders governing the parties remained in effect.
What happened
In Collymore v. City of New York, Robin Collymore challenged several orders by Magistrate Judge Wang concerning the parties’ discovery disputes. The objections involved discovery scheduling, possible sanctions, electronically stored information, document requests, and search results.
The district court reviewed the objections under a deferential standard. It found no clear error or improper application of the law in Judge Wang’s decisions, and it declined to consider a sanctions request that Collymore raised for the first time in the objections.
Judge Swain overruled all of Collymore’s objections and left Judge Wang’s discovery orders in place. The ruling addressed discovery management rather than the underlying claims in the case.
The detailed version
- Collymore v. City Of New York · No. 1:16-cv-08270
- Laura Swain
- June 3, 2021
Background
Robin Collymore filed four sets of objections to orders issued by Magistrate Judge Wang on September 14, September 16, September 18, and October 19, 2020, and April 30, 2021. The orders principally concerned discovery disputes between Collymore and the defendants, the City of New York, Lisa Maluf, Matthew Austin, and David Kirks.
Legal standard
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a), a district court may modify or set aside a magistrate judge’s non-dispositive order if it is clearly erroneous or contrary to law. A decision is clearly erroneous when the reviewing court is firmly convinced that a mistake was made. An order is contrary to law when it fails to apply, or misapplies, relevant statutes, case law, or procedural rules. The court explained that this review is highly deferential, particularly for discovery matters, because magistrate judges have broad discretion to manage discovery disputes.
Court’s analysis
The court concluded that none of the challenged orders was clearly erroneous or contrary to law.
- The court declined to disturb Judge Wang’s management of the discovery schedule or her references to possible sanctions for failing to follow that schedule. Some objections concerned wording in the orders, sanctions that had not been imposed, or deposition scheduling issues that might have become moot. - The court found no error in Judge Wang’s failure to issue an electronic-discovery plan because Collymore had not identified a rule or case requiring one. - The court declined to consider Collymore’s request for sanctions based on the alleged failure to preserve electronically stored information because Collymore had not raised that request in the earlier briefing before Judge Wang. - The court found no error in Judge Wang’s decisions concerning the relevance and proportionality of Collymore’s document requests. The court noted that the defendants had produced some, but not all, of the requested comparator information. - The court found no clear error in the conclusion that documents identified by agreed search terms were not necessarily responsive to the discovery requests, because keyword searches can also identify irrelevant documents. - The court found Collymore’s remaining arguments meritless.
Disposition
Judge Laura Taylor Swain overruled Collymore’s objections to Judge Wang’s orders. The discovery orders therefore remained in effect. The opinion did not decide the merits of the underlying claims.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.