Suber v. VVP Services, LLC
- Alison Nathan
- 1:20-cv-08177
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Suber v. VVP Services, Judge Nathan denied transfer and denied the request to pause deadlines as moot, leaving only sealing issues.
Karen M. Suber’s requests to transfer the case and pause deadlines were denied; the parties must address the limited dispute over sealed documents in the Southern District of New York.
What happened
In Karen M. Suber v. VVP Services, LLC, the court considered Suber’s request to move the case to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and her request to pause deadlines while that request was pending. The case had already been dismissed without prejudice because the court lacked personal jurisdiction over Suber’s claims.
The Second Circuit affirmed that dismissal but sent the case back for the limited purpose of addressing whether certain documents should remain sealed. Suber then asked to transfer the case, even though the Second Circuit had previously declined to transfer it and had limited what the district court could consider on remand.
Judge Nathan denied the motion to transfer because it was outside the Second Circuit’s instructions and repeated an argument the appellate court had rejected. The court also denied the motion to stay as moot. The remaining work concerns which documents are judicial documents and whether any sealing should continue.
The detailed version
- Suber v. VVP Services, LLC · No. 1:20-cv-08177
- Alison Nathan
- Apr. 27, 2023
Background
The court had previously granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint without prejudice. The Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal. It vacated the district court’s ruling only to the extent that it had sealed certain exhibits and remanded the matter for a limited review of those exhibits, including whether they were judicial documents, whether attorney-client privilege applied, and whether the crime-fraud exception affected any privileged documents.
After the appellate mandate issued, the district court directed the parties to confer and identify any remaining sealing disputes. Plaintiff then moved to transfer the case to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and separately moved to stay all deadlines while the transfer motion was pending.
Transfer Motion
The court denied the motion to transfer. It applied the mandate rule, which generally requires a lower court to follow the appellate court’s instructions after a remand and prevents reconsideration of issues that the appellate court expressly or implicitly resolved. The court held that the requested transfer was outside the limited scope of the Second Circuit’s remand. It also noted that Plaintiff had raised the transfer issue during the appeal and that the Second Circuit had declined to transfer the case, citing Plaintiff’s delay and lack of specificity about the hardship that would result from not transferring it.
The court added that, even if the mandate rule did not bar the request, it would still decline to transfer the case. The court stated that the case was closed, that both courts had held that the district court lacked jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s claims, and that only the limited sealing dispute remained. Under those circumstances, the court concluded that transferring the case would not serve judicial efficiency or the interests of justice.
Stay Motion and Disposition
Because the transfer motion was denied, the court denied Plaintiff’s motion to stay as moot. The court directed counsel to focus on identifying which sealed documents were judicial documents and whether there was a basis to keep all or part of those documents sealed. The court ordered the Clerk of Court to terminate Docket Nos. 166 and 168. Judge Alison J. Nathan therefore denied the motion to transfer and denied the motion to stay as moot.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.