Delux Public Charter, LLC v. County of Westchester, New York
- Philip Halpern
- 7:22-cv-01930
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Delux Public Charter v. County of Westchester, Judge Halpern denied plaintiffs’ request to compel discovery because it was late, privileged, or irrelevant.
The ruling affects Delux Public Charter, LLC and the other plaintiffs seeking documents, and the County of Westchester and the other defendants opposing production.
What happened
Delux Public Charter, LLC and the other plaintiffs asked the court to order the County of Westchester and the other defendants to produce documents in two discovery disputes.
The requests included three 2019 legal documents and records about a proposed 2016 privatization of the County Airport. The discovery deadline had passed before plaintiffs brought the disputes to the court.
Judge Halpern denied the request to compel production. He ruled that the three 2019 documents were protected by attorney-client privilege and that the airport-privatization documents were untimely, irrelevant, and not proportional to the case’s needs.
The detailed version
- Delux Public Charter, LLC v. County of Westchester, New York · No. 7:22-cv-01930
- Philip Halpern
- Mar. 27, 2023
Background
Counsel for all parties appeared at a case-management conference. The court heard argument about two discovery disputes raised in a joint letter and reviewed, privately and outside the parties’ presence, three documents that were the subject of the plaintiffs’ first request.
The plaintiffs sought production of a February 28, 2019 email summarizing an outside aviation counsel’s memorandum, the February 4, 2019 memorandum by that counsel, and a March 15, 2019 memorandum from the County Attorney. They argued that the documents were relevant because the County had taken a different position about whether temporary use permits applied to the plaintiffs than the position described in the 2019 memoranda, and because the County’s knowledge of the plaintiffs’ operations since 2015 had been placed at issue.
The plaintiffs also requested documents concerning the County Airport’s proposed privatization in 2016. The court noted that the County had produced documents and a privilege log in December 2022, fact discovery ended on January 27, 2023, and the plaintiffs did not raise the dispute with the court until March 6, 2023.
Ruling
The court denied the plaintiffs’ request to compel production. It stated that the delay alone supported denial. Even aside from the delay, the court would not order production of the three 2019 documents because its private review showed that they were confidential communications made to obtain or provide legal advice. The court concluded that attorney-client privilege therefore applied.
The court also denied the request for documents about the 2016 proposed privatization. It found the request untimely and ruled that the information sought was not relevant to the claims and defenses or proportional to the needs of the case. The court said that the plaintiffs had not shown that the request was anything more than an improper search for potentially useful information. Judge Philip M. Halpern entered the order on March 27, 2023.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.