Dass v. The City University of New York
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:18-cv-11325
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Dass v. The City University of New York, Judge Wang granted defendants’ request for four more deposition hours after finding the first session incomplete and disrupted.
Krishna Dass must attend four additional hours of in-person deposition questioning. The defendants may conduct that questioning, and counsel for both sides may face sanctions if delaying conduct prevents completion on time.
What happened
In Dass v. The City University of New York, the defendants asked for additional time to question Krishna Dass at her deposition. Dass argued that she had already testified for seven hours and that defense counsel’s inefficiency caused the need for more time.
The court reviewed the full deposition transcript and found that the initial session did not include seven hours of testimony. It also found that Dass gave lengthy, unresponsive answers and that her lawyer made repeated speaking objections, which slowed the questioning. The court rejected Dass’s objections that the defendants had waived additional questioning or had asked about irrelevant matters.
Judge Wang granted the defendants’ request and ordered Dass to attend an in-person deposition in New York for four additional hours by August 31, 2023. The parties must pay their own costs, and the court warned that the party whose delaying conduct prevents timely completion may face sanctions.
The detailed version
- Dass v. The City University of New York · No. 1:18-cv-11325
- Vernon Broderick
- May 31, 2023
Background
The case had been pending and in discovery for more than four years. The remaining discovery dispute concerned the defendants’ request for additional time to complete Krishna Dass’s deposition. The request followed a remote video deposition that lasted from 10:09 a.m. to 6:19 p.m., but the defendants argued that substantial time was spent on lunch, counsel’s professional obligation, objections, comments, and other matters rather than obtaining testimony.
The defendants sought additional time under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(d)(1), which generally provides a seven-hour limit for a deposition. Dass argued that she had already testified for seven hours and that defense counsel’s inefficiency caused the need for more time. She also objected that the defendants had waived further questioning and were applying the seven-hour limit differently to her than to defense witnesses.
Court’s analysis
The court reviewed the entire deposition transcript. It found that the initial session had not completed the presumptive seven hours of testimony. The court also stated that, even if seven hours had been completed, additional time would be warranted because of the nature and pace of Dass’s responses during the remote deposition and her counsel’s speaking objections.
The court found that Dass began giving evasive answers shortly after questioning began and later gave lengthy, evasive answers about nonmaterial matters. It rejected her argument that defense counsel acted inefficiently by asking about previously dismissed Americans with Disabilities Act and Family and Medical Leave Act claims, medical issues, requested office moves, and damages. The court found that some of those questions could reasonably relate to the claims in the operative complaint and that the cited damages questioning was one of the portions of the deposition that proceeded conventionally.
Ruling and effect
The court granted the defendants’ request for additional deposition time. It directed Dass to appear for an in-person deposition in New York for four more hours of testimony, to be completed no later than August 31, 2023. Counsel had to file a letter identifying the deposition date and time by June 23, 2023. Each side was ordered to bear its own costs for the continued deposition. The court warned that sanctions could result if a party’s delaying conduct prevented completion within the allotted time. Judge Ona T. Wang signed the opinion and order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.