King v. Wang
- Lewis Liman
- 1:14-cv-07694
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In King v. Wang, Judge Liman denied defendants’ request to exclude Yien-Koo King’s late damages theory from trial.
Yien-Koo King may pursue the Sotheby’s + 20% damages theory at trial; Andrew Wang and Shou-Kung Wang may oppose it at trial, and their request to exclude it was denied.
What happened
In King v. Wang, defendants Andrew Wang and Shou-Kung Wang asked the court to prevent Yien-Koo King, acting for C.C. Wang’s estate, from presenting a damages theory that had not appeared in her required disclosures. The theory sought damages based on paintings allegedly selling for less than the Sotheby’s appraisal price plus 20 percent.
The court agreed that King violated the disclosure rules and was not justified in waiting to identify the theory. But the court found that excluding it would be especially harsh because the theory had become important after other appraisal evidence was excluded, and the defendants did not show significant prejudice or a need for more discovery.
Judge Liman denied the motion and allowed King to pursue the Sotheby’s-plus-20-percent theory at trial. The clerk was directed to close the motion.
The detailed version
- King v. Wang · No. 1:14-cv-07694
- Lewis Liman
- Nov. 12, 2021
Background
The case was scheduled for a jury trial on November 29, 2021. Defendants Andrew Wang and Shou-Kung Wang moved to preclude, or bar, plaintiff Yien-Koo King from presenting a damages theory that differed from the theory in her required disclosures under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26.
King was acting as preliminary executrix of C.C. Wang’s estate. In a proposed insertion for the joint pretrial order, she stated that damages would be calculated from the Sotheby’s appraisal price for each painting plus 20 percent, compared with the prices the estate actually received. The court referred to this as the “Sotheby’s + 20%” damages theory. The parties did not dispute that King had not included this theory or calculation in her Rule 26 disclosures.
Legal standard
Rule 26 requires a party to disclose a computation of each category of damages claimed and to timely supplement or correct disclosures that become materially incomplete or incorrect. Rule 37 provides that information not properly disclosed generally cannot be used at trial unless the failure was substantially justified or harmless. Courts consider the explanation for the failure, the importance of the evidence, the prejudice to the opposing party, and whether a continuance could address the problem.
Court’s analysis
The court found that King’s failure was not substantially justified. It rejected her explanation that the available damages became clear only after experts gave their opinions, reasoning that she should have supplemented her disclosures when the theory emerged. The court also found that she had not identified new facts that became available only shortly before trial.
The court nevertheless found that the theory was important. After the court excluded King’s expert appraisal evidence, the claim that the paintings were sold without a 20-percent premium became at least one of the most important parts of her case. Excluding the theory would therefore be a particularly harsh sanction.
The court found that the defendants had not shown significant prejudice. The factual issues underlying the theory—including the Sotheby’s appraisal, the 20-percent figure, the sale prices, and whether the paintings were sold at fair market value—had been part of the case from the beginning. Discovery and testimony had addressed those subjects, including testimony from Andrew Wang and questioning of the Public Administrator. The defendants’ own expert had also relied on the understanding that a 20-percent addition had occurred, and King had previously challenged that factual premise.
The court further found that a continuance was unnecessary. The case had been pending since 2014, and the defendants had not shown that additional discovery was needed to defend against the theory.
Ruling
The court held that King violated Rule 26 and was not justified in failing to disclose the damages theory earlier. But because the defendants had not identified significant prejudice, the court declined to impose the extraordinary sanction of preclusion. Judge Lewis J. Liman denied the motion in limine and directed the clerk to close the motion at Docket No. 300.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.