Chicon-Deleon v. Trans Continental Trucking LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:20-cv-05643
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Chicon-Deleon v. Trans Continental Trucking, Judge Furman denied defendants’ motion to bar eyewitness Franciso Veras from testifying.
The ruling allowed Franciso Veras to testify and affected Plaintiff Jose R. Chicon-Deleon and Defendants Trans Continental Trucking, LLC and Yashpal Amarsingh.
What happened
In Chicon-Deleon v. Trans Continental Trucking, the defendants asked the court to prevent Franciso Veras from testifying because information about him was disclosed after a discovery deadline.
The court noted that the late disclosure favored the defendants because the information had been known to the plaintiff, but it found that Mr. Veras had already given a deposition and had witnessed the accident. The court therefore ruled that he could testify.
Judge Jesse M. Furman denied the motion. He also ordered the plaintiff to respond by July 12, 2021, to the remaining portions of the defendants’ motion.
The detailed version
- Chicon-Deleon v. Trans Continental Trucking LLC · No. 1:20-cv-05643
- Jesse Furman
- June 30, 2021
Background
The defendants moved to prevent Franciso Veras from testifying. The motion concerned an alleged failure to meet a discovery deadline. The opinion states that Mr. Veras’s employer may not have been known to counsel earlier, but that the employer was known to the plaintiff himself. Mr. Veras had already been deposed and was an eyewitness to the accident at issue.
Court’s analysis
When deciding whether to bar testimony because of a missed discovery deadline, the court considers the explanation for the failure to disclose, the importance of the evidence, the prejudice to the opposing party, and whether a continuance is possible. The court found that the first factor favored the defendants. It found that the other factors strongly favored allowing Mr. Veras to testify because he had already been deposed and had witnessed the accident.
Ruling
The court denied the defendants’ motion in limine to preclude Mr. Veras’s testimony. The court also directed the plaintiff to respond to the other portions of the defendants’ motion in limine by Monday, July 12, 2021.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.