Roberts v. BroadwayHD LLC

Background

The court held a pretrial videoconference concerning outstanding discovery disputes and the next steps in the case. Roberts asked the court to order documents from Bruce Brandwen, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, LLC, and the Lieber and Stoller defendants. The requests included communications about Roberts and his claimed interest in vocal arrangements, invoices concerning licenses for songs from the 1999 recording and the Smokey Joe’s Café musical, and documents concerning Sony’s 2007 acquisition of the Lieber and Stoller catalog.

The responding defendants said they had already produced all discoverable materials. The court accepted Brandwen’s statement that he had produced all responsive documents, while noting that Roberts could question Brandwen under oath if Roberts believed documents were being withheld. The court also ordered parties that had withheld materials based on attorney-client privilege or another privilege to provide privilege logs by February 21, 2023.

Discovery Rulings

The court found that limited additional discovery from Sony was warranted. Sony represented that it was reviewing materials from custodians most likely to have documents related to the 2000 recording of Smokey Joe’s Café. The court directed Sony to complete that review and produce any newly found responsive materials by February 28, 2023.

The court declined to order Sony to produce documentation concerning all licenses it had granted for songs in the Lieber and Stoller catalog or its due-diligence review before acquiring that catalog. It found that the requested searches would be highly burdensome and disproportionate to the needs of the case because the information was minimally relevant, Roberts sought broad access to records involving songs in which he had no involvement, and any value concerning whether the defendants acted willfully would be limited. The court also found that Sony had already produced thousands of documents. For the same reasons, the court required no additional discovery on those topics from the Lieber and Stoller defendants.

Other Rulings and Next Steps

Based on the parties’ representations, the court denied as moot Roberts’s motion to strike certain affirmative defenses and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate that motion at docket entry 195.

The court referred the parties to a settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Lehrburger and directed them to arrange a conference in March 2023. The expert-discovery deadline was tolled from February 8, 2023, through the settlement conference, but the referral did not toll the remaining fact-discovery deadlines. The parties were ordered to file a joint status letter within three days after the conference stating whether they had reached a settlement in principle. If they had not, the court said it would promptly set a briefing schedule for the defendants’ anticipated motions for summary judgment and would dispense with its usual pre-motion submission requirement. Judge Katherine Polk Failla issued the order.