Naula Ndugga v. Bloomberg L.P.

Background

The court considered the parties’ letters concerning Naula Ndugga’s request for human-resources data about editors and reporters. The opinion states that Ndugga was a producer. It does not provide further details about the underlying claims.

Ruling

The court explained that, to establish that data about editors and reporters was relevant to a producer’s claims, Ndugga had to show some common decision-making group or process that operated across those job categories. The court accepted that the Editorial Management Committee had only sporadic involvement in compensation decisions for producers, editors, and reporters. It nevertheless found that the committee had at least some involvement and that defendants had offered only conclusory statements about the burden of producing the information.

The court therefore ordered production of the human-resources data concerning editors and reporters. It also directed defendants to discuss with Ndugga any particularly burdensome limited subset of the data and try to reach an agreement. If a dispute remained about the burden of producing a limited subset, defendants could bring that issue to the court.

Effect of the Order

This was a discovery order. It resolved the request for the specified data but did not decide the merits of the underlying employment dispute. The order was issued by United States Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein.