Avantgarde Senior Living v. GoFund LLC
- Rochon
- 1:22-cv-04313
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Avantgarde Senior Living v. GoFund LLC, Judge Rochon set deadlines and a conference for a motion to quash a subpoena.
Defendant Yosef Brezel, the plaintiffs, plaintiffs’ counsel, and Optimum Bank were affected by the court’s scheduling and briefing requirements concerning the subpoena.
What happened
Avantgarde Senior Living v. GoFund LLC involved a subpoena to Optimum Bank for financial records concerning defendant Yosef Brezel. Brezel’s lawyer said the bank produced the records before the subpoena’s stated production date and before Brezel could seek a court ruling.
Brezel asked the court to require the plaintiffs’ lawyers to separate or destroy the records until he could be heard on a motion to quash, meaning a request to cancel or limit the subpoena. The plaintiffs’ lawyers did not agree to separate the records, and the parties’ efforts to resolve the dispute did not succeed.
Judge Jennifer L. Rochon ordered the defendants to file a no-more-than-three-page letter-motion to quash by February 9, 2023, and ordered the plaintiff to respond by February 13. The court also scheduled a conference for the 16th to discuss the motion. The order did not decide whether the subpoena should be quashed.
The detailed version
- Avantgarde Senior Living v. GoFund LLC · No. 1:22-cv-04313
- Rochon
- Feb. 6, 2023
Background
The opinion is a discovery-dispute order concerning a subpoena issued to Optimum Bank for financial documents related to defendant Yosef Brezel. Brezel’s counsel stated that the subpoena identified February 16, 2023, as the production date, but Optimum unexpectedly produced the documents to plaintiffs’ counsel about three weeks earlier. Counsel said Brezel had advised the plaintiffs that he intended to seek an order quashing the subpoena and had begun the required discussions between the parties.
Brezel’s counsel described the subpoena as overbroad and argued that the requested documents were not likely to lead to admissible evidence. Counsel also referred to a prior related proceeding in which a judge denied a motion to compel production of similar documents from Optimum. The opinion states that plaintiffs’ counsel intended to use documents from the Optimum production in that earlier proceeding, while the parties there were separately addressing the issue with that judge.
Relief Requested
Brezel requested an order requiring plaintiffs’ counsel to segregate or destroy the Optimum production until Brezel could be heard on his anticipated motion to quash. Counsel said the parties’ meet-and-confer efforts were unsuccessful, including because plaintiffs’ counsel did not answer a scheduled call and would not agree to segregate the documents.
Court’s Order
The court ordered the defendants to file a letter-motion to quash the subpoena, limited to three pages, no later than February 9, 2023. It ordered the plaintiff to respond in a letter-brief of no more than three pages by February 13, 2023. The plaintiff’s response was required to state whether it complied with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(a)(4), which concerns notice before a subpoena requiring document production is served.
The court also ordered the parties to appear for a conference to discuss the motion to quash on the 16th at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 20B of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse. The order did not grant or deny the motion to quash and did not rule on the request to segregate or destroy the documents.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.