Bensmaine v. City of New York
- Lewis Liman
- 1:21-cv-04816
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Bensmaine v. City of New York, Judge Liman denied defendants’ discovery stay and granted in part and denied in part Bensmaine’s request to compel discovery.
Bensmaine and the defendants were affected by the discovery rulings. The defendants had to respond to the outstanding discovery demands within 30 days, and both sides had to submit a proposed amended case-management plan by September 2, 2022.
What happened
In Bensmaine v. City of New York, the defendants asked the court to pause fact discovery while their motion to dismiss the case based on the pleadings was pending. Bensmaine opposed the pause and later asked the court to require responses to outstanding discovery requests.
The court said a discovery pause requires a good reason and that filing a motion to dismiss does not automatically pause discovery. It found that the defendants had not adequately shown that the discovery requests were too burdensome, that the proposed pause would not harm Bensmaine, or that their pending motion was strong enough to justify stopping discovery.
Judge Liman denied the defendants’ request to stay discovery. He granted in part and denied in part Bensmaine’s motion to compel: the defendants must respond to the outstanding discovery requests within 30 days, and the parties must submit a proposed amended case-management plan by September 2, 2022.
The detailed version
- Bensmaine v. City of New York · No. 1:21-cv-04816
- Lewis Liman
- Aug. 15, 2022
Background
The court’s scheduling order set August 19, 2022, as the deadline to complete fact discovery and August 12, 2022, as the deposition deadline. The defendants said they intended to file a motion for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), which asks whether the pleadings themselves show that a party is entitled to judgment. They also asked the court to stay, or pause, discovery. The defendants later filed that motion, but Bensmaine had not yet responded to it.
Instead, Bensmaine moved to compel discovery, asking the court to require responses to outstanding discovery requests dating from January 14, 2022, and to suspend the discovery deadlines until the defendants responded. The defendants stated that they had unilaterally treated discovery as stayed while their request was pending.
Court’s analysis
The court denied the defendants’ motion for a discovery stay. It explained that a discovery schedule may be changed only for good cause, meaning a sufficient justification. Courts consider the breadth of the requested discovery, the prejudice that a stay would cause, and the strength of the motion that supposedly justifies the stay. A motion to dismiss generally does not automatically pause discovery.
The defendants principally relied on videos that they said showed Bensmaine’s arrest was lawful and that no force was used. They relied on those videos to argue that the complaint failed to state First Amendment, false-arrest, and excessive-force claims. The court noted that the cited decision involved summary judgment, where parties may rely on evidence produced during discovery. The defendants also suggested that the court could convert their pleadings motion into a summary-judgment motion if the videos could not be considered. The court stated that this undermined the argument for stopping discovery because, before discovery, the opposing party may state that it cannot yet present facts needed to oppose summary judgment.
The court also found that the defendants had not explained why Bensmaine’s 67 discovery demands were unduly burdensome. It rejected the argument that Bensmaine would suffer no prejudice merely because the stay would last only until the court decided the defendants’ motion. The court noted that the case concerned an arrest on May 30, 2020, that the complaint was filed on May 30, 2021, and that a further stay would delay case-specific discovery and impede Bensmaine’s ability to participate in remaining discovery in related consolidated cases.
Rulings and effect
The court denied the defendants’ motion at Docket No.
- It granted in part and denied in part Bensmaine’s motion at Docket No.
- The defendants were ordered to respond to the outstanding discovery demands within 30 days of the order. The parties were ordered to submit a proposed amended case-management plan by September 2,
- The court declined to hold a status conference unless the parties made a further request, and declined to extend Bensmaine’s deadline to respond to any outstanding discovery requests from the defendants. The clerk was directed to close Docket Nos. 85 and
- The order did not decide the merits of the underlying claims or the defendants’ pending pleadings motion.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.