IN RE: NEW YORK CITY POLICING DURING SUMMER 2020 DEMONSTRATIONS
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-08924
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Rolon v. City of New York, Judge McMahon dissolved the stay, allowing the individual plaintiffs to participate in consolidated-case proceedings.
The order directly affected the Rolon plaintiffs by lifting the stay in their individual lawsuit and allowing them to participate fully in the related consolidated-case proceedings. It also maintained their related-case status rather than separating their case from the other lawsuits.
What happened
In Rolon v. City of New York, the plaintiffs sued as individuals over policing during the 2020 demonstrations and asked the court to lift a stay that had paused their case. Their case had been coordinated with other lawsuits about the demonstrations for pretrial purposes.
The stay had been entered to avoid duplicating discovery while another related case moved toward trial. Later, discovery progressed in the related cases, and other individual plaintiffs began participating in it.
Judge McMahon refused to separate the Rolon case from the related cases but granted the request to lift the stay. The Rolon plaintiffs could therefore participate fully in the proceedings and would be placed on the same footing as the other plaintiff groups.
The detailed version
- IN RE: NEW YORK CITY POLICING DURING SUMMER 2020 DEMONSTRATIONS · No. 1:20-cv-08924
- Colleen McMahon
- May 11, 2022
Background
The Rolon plaintiffs filed their lawsuit as individuals, not for a proposed class, on April 29, 2021. The lawsuit was accepted as related to earlier lawsuits arising from more than 80 demonstrations in New York City during the early summer of 2020. The related cases were coordinated and consolidated for pretrial purposes, meaning that the court coordinated matters such as discovery before trial.
On the day the Rolon case was filed, the court stayed all activity in that case to avoid duplicating discovery while a related case, which the court hoped could be prepared for trial, proceeded. In the year that followed, the court ruled on motions to dismiss, the City produced substantial discovery, and other individual plaintiffs began participating in discovery coordinated with the related cases.
The Rolon plaintiffs asked the court either to treat their case as unrelated to the consolidated cases or to lift the stay so they could participate in the ongoing proceedings. The court also described a pending dispute over whether the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association could intervene in the consolidated cases. The Second Circuit had reversed the district court’s earlier denial of that union’s request for permission to intervene, but the appellate mandate had not yet issued because a request for reconsideration or rehearing by the full appellate court was pending. The district court was waiting to decide intervention motions by two other unions until the PBA’s status was resolved.
Court’s Ruling
Judge McMahon declined to treat the Rolon case as unrelated because the plaintiffs had knowingly sought and obtained related-case status when they filed it. She concluded, however, that the stay should be lifted after consulting Magistrate Judge Gorenstein, who was overseeing discovery. The court granted the application to lift the stay and dissolved the stay entered in the Rolon case. The order placed the Rolon plaintiffs on the same footing as the other plaintiff groups and allowed them to participate fully in the consolidated-case proceedings.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.