Mahulawde v. Fashion Institute of Technology
- Sarah Cave
- 1:21-cv-03878
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Mahulawde v. Fashion Institute of Technology, Judge Cave denied defendants’ request to exclude late-produced materials and allowed a limited continued deposition.
Dawnn Karen Mahulawde and the defendants—Fashion Institute of Technology, Joseph Maiorca, Roberta Paley, and Roberta Degnore—were affected by the discovery order. The defendants may conduct a limited continued deposition and may request related fees and costs; Mahulawde must provide supplemental disclosures and responses.
What happened
In Mahulawde v. Fashion Institute of Technology, the defendants asked the court to prevent Dawnn Karen Mahulawde from relying on an audio recording, a video compilation, and medical records that she produced shortly before the fact-discovery deadline.
The court denied the request to exclude the materials. Instead, it allowed the defendants to continue Mahulawde’s deposition for up to three hours, limited to questions about how she gathered and produced the materials and what they contain. The court also ordered supplemental disclosures and discovery responses.
Judge Sarah L. Cave found that the late production harmed the defendants but that reopening the deposition could address that harm without excluding the materials. She also allowed the defendants to ask for payment of the costs and fees of the continued deposition, subject to further submissions.
The detailed version
- Mahulawde v. Fashion Institute of Technology · No. 1:21-cv-03878
- Sarah Cave
- July 26, 2023
Background
The defendants filed a letter-motion seeking an order precluding, or preventing, Plaintiff Dawnn Karen Mahulawde from relying on an audio recording, a video compilation, and medical records from 2022. Mahulawde produced these materials at 11:30 p.m. on the final day of fact discovery, after her deposition and about 30 minutes before the discovery deadline. Mahulawde opposed the motion but agreed to have her deposition reopened for questions about the newly produced materials.
Court’s ruling
The Court DENIED the motion. It recognized that the late disclosure prejudiced the defendants but concluded that the prejudice could be addressed by allowing a continued deposition instead of imposing the harsher remedy of excluding the materials.
The continued deposition must occur by September 25, 2023, must be limited to three hours on the record, and may address only Mahulawde’s gathering and production of the materials and the substance of those materials. By August 9, 2023, Mahulawde had to provide supplemental disclosures under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a) and supplemental responses identifying which requests for production the materials answered.
The defendants could submit, by August 9, 2023, a letter of no more than three pages asking the Court to require Mahulawde to pay the fees and costs of the continued deposition. The request had to include the defendants’ requests for production, Mahulawde’s original responses, and relevant deposition-transcript excerpts. By September 8, 2023, Mahulawde’s counsel had to file a declaration describing efforts to obtain her treatment records from the New York City Department of Health Riverside Sexual Health Clinic and any response to the defendants’ fee request. The parties were also ordered to promptly order a transcript of the discovery conference, and the Clerk was directed to close ECF No. 70.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.