Moraes v. White
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:21-cv-04743
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Moraes v. White, Judge Engelmayer ordered defendants to respond by January 14 to Moraes’s request for a protective order before her deposition.
The order concerned discovery involving Barbara Moraes, the defendants, and Moraes’s current employer; it required defendants to respond to Moraes’s protective-order request by January 14, 2022.
What happened
In Moraes v. White, Barbara Moraes’s lawyer asked the court for a protective order before Moraes’s scheduled January 19 deposition. The request sought to prevent defendants from subpoenaing or contacting Moraes’s current employer and to excuse her from identifying that employer during questioning.
Moraes’s lawyer argued that the employer information was irrelevant or could be obtained in less harmful ways. Defendants said the information could relate to defamation damages, Moraes’s ability to work, what she told her current employer about her past employment, the reasons she was hired, and whether her employer observed signs of emotional distress.
The court did not decide the protective-order request in this document. Instead, Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered that defendants’ response was due January 14, 2022.
The detailed version
- Moraes v. White · No. 1:21-cv-04743
- Paul Engelmayer
- Jan. 12, 2022
Background
The provided document is a letter from Jonathan A. Bernstein, counsel for plaintiff Barbara Moraes, asking the court for a protective order before Moraes’s scheduled January 19 deposition. The requested order would prohibit defendants from subpoenaing or otherwise contacting Moraes’s current employer and would excuse Moraes from answering questions seeking the employer’s identity.
Moraes’s counsel stated that defendants had served an interrogatory seeking the name and contact information of Moraes’s current employer. Counsel objected that the information was irrelevant but said Moraes would answer if defendants agreed not to subpoena or contact the employer. Counsel later provided a redacted employment contract showing Moraes’s hiring date and pay rate.
Positions described in the letter
According to the letter, defendants argued that the information could be relevant to calculating defamation damages, testing whether Moraes’s emotional distress affected her ability to work, and investigating other matters concerning her hiring and statements about her prior employment. Defendants also intended to notice Moraes’s current employer for deposition.
Moraes’s counsel responded that Moraes was not seeking economic damages for defamation, had not claimed that emotional distress made her unable to work during the relevant period, and had not alleged that defendants’ conduct affected her current employer’s decision to hire her. Counsel also argued that direct contact with the current employer could harm Moraes’s employment and that defendants had not first sought testimony from the emotional-distress witnesses identified in Moraes’s initial disclosures.
Court action
Judge Paul Engelmayer did not rule on the merits of the protective-order request in the provided text. The document ends with the court’s order that defendants’ response was due January 14, 2022. Because this was a discovery-related scheduling or case-management order rather than a decision on the underlying claims, it is classified as a procedural order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.