Allen v. New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision
- Loretta Preska
- 1:19-cv-08173
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Allen v. New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Judge Preska ordered plaintiffs to respond to defendants’ protective-order request.
The plaintiffs and the State Represented Defendants involved in the discovery dispute, including the defendants seeking confidential treatment for quality-assurance and quality-improvement meeting minutes.
What happened
In Allen v. New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, defendants asked the court to expand an existing protective order to cover quality-assurance and quality-improvement meeting minutes as confidential materials. The minutes concern internal reviews of medical care at correctional facilities.
The request followed a prior dispute over whether the documents could be labeled “Attorneys’ Eyes Only.” The court had sustained plaintiffs’ challenge to that label, and defendants later produced additional minutes marked “Confidential.” Plaintiffs’ counsel objected to that designation.
Judge Loretta A. Preska did not decide the request to expand the protective order in this order. Instead, she directed plaintiffs to respond to defendants’ letter and exhibit by December 15, 2021.
The detailed version
- Allen v. New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision · No. 1:19-cv-08173
- Loretta Preska
- Dec. 8, 2021
Background
The parties had entered into a confidentiality and protective order in August 2021. The order defined confidential materials and allowed some materials to be designated “Attorneys’ Eyes Only,” meaning access was limited to attorneys and other authorized persons. The order identified materials that could compromise the safety, security, or good order of a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision facility as a primary category for that designation.
The dispute involved quality-assurance and quality-improvement meeting minutes from 24 facilities. Defendants described these meetings as internal reviews involving medical personnel and other officials. According to defendants, the minutes could discuss responses to deaths or illnesses, medical transfers, chart reviews, recordkeeping, and corrective-action plans.
Parties’ Positions
Defendants’ December 7, 2021 letter asked the court to expand the protective order so that the meeting minutes would be treated as “Confidential,” rather than “Attorneys’ Eyes Only.” Defendants argued that confidentiality would encourage candid discussion of medical-care problems and promote improvement of medical care. They also continued to assert objections and privileges, including attorney-client privilege, work-product protection, deliberative-process privilege, self-critical-analysis privilege, law-enforcement privilege, and protection for subsequent remedial measures.
The letter stated that plaintiffs’ counsel had challenged the confidential designation after defendants produced additional meeting minutes marked “Confidential.” The letter also referred to an earlier September 23 order in which the court sustained plaintiffs’ challenge to the “Attorneys’ Eyes Only” designation because it was not apparent how the documents implicated facility safety, institutional security, or good order.
Court’s Action
Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered plaintiffs to respond to defendants’ letter and exhibit no later than December 15, 2021. The order did not grant or deny defendants’ request to expand the protective order, and it did not resolve the asserted privileges or other objections.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.