Pujols v. RTS Solutionz, Inc.
- Katharine Parker
- 1:22-cv-05455
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Pujols v. RTS Solutionz, Inc., Judge Parker ordered a response to a request to pause discovery; the text does not show a ruling on the request.
The defendants—RTS Solutionz, Inc., Bill Warnick, Jill Armand, and Kylee Wald—and plaintiff Faustino Pujols were directly affected by the request to pause discovery. The document also states that Russ Deckler had settled his claims.
What happened
In Pujols v. RTS Solutionz, Inc., the defendants asked the court to pause discovery in the case while it considered their pending request for judgment based on the pleadings. They argued that the request could end Faustino Pujols’s remaining claims and that continuing discovery would burden the defendants.
The letter states that Russ Deckler had settled his claims and that five claims by Pujols remained. It also says the defendants’ request was based on claim preclusion and claim-splitting, but the text does not show that the court had ruled on that request or on the request to pause discovery.
Judge Katharine H. Parker ordered plaintiff’s counsel to file a reply by November 29, 2022. The document does not state that the court granted or denied the requested pause in discovery.
The detailed version
- Pujols v. RTS Solutionz, Inc. · No. 1:22-cv-05455
- Katharine Parker
- Nov. 21, 2022
Document and request
This document is a pre-motion letter from defendants RTS Solutionz, Inc., Bill Warnick, Jill Armand, and Kylee Wald (formerly identified as Cheeney). They asked for permission to make, or to proceed with, a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) to stay discovery—that is, temporarily pause the exchange of information and depositions—until the court ruled on their pending Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings.
Background described in the letter
The letter describes an earlier related proceeding filed by Faustino Pujols. In that earlier proceeding, the court denied Pujols’s request to file a fourth amended complaint, finding that he had not shown good cause because he had not been diligent in pursuing certain new claims. The letter states that the current case was removed from New York State Court and that the current complaint includes five claims by Pujols that are identical to five claims involved in the earlier proceeding.
The letter further states that fact discovery in the earlier proceeding had closed. In the current case, defendants had filed a Rule 12(c) motion seeking dismissal of Pujols’s five claims and dismissal of Armand and Wald from all counts based on claim preclusion and claim-splitting. Claim preclusion generally concerns whether a claim was or should have been resolved in an earlier case; claim-splitting concerns pursuing parts of the same dispute in separate actions. The letter says the motion had been fully briefed and had not yet been decided. It also says that Deckler had settled all of his claims and that only Pujols’s five claims remained in the current case.
Discovery-stay arguments
Defendants argued that a stay was justified because their pending motion could dispose of the entire current case, the requested stay would last only until the court decided that motion, and Pujols would not be unfairly harmed. They also argued that continuing discovery—including responding to document requests and defending depositions—would burden defendants and waste resources.
Action shown in the document
The text does not state that Judge Parker granted or denied the request to stay discovery. Instead, the document states: “Plaintiff’s Counsel shall file a letter in reply by Tuesday, November 29, 2022.” Thus, the disposition of the discovery request and the pending Rule 12(c) motion is not shown in this document.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.