Bonilla v. City of New York
- Analisa Torres
- 1:22-cv-07113
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Bonilla v. City of New York, Judge Parker scheduled a conference to address discovery disputes and ordered fact discovery to continue.
The plaintiff and the defendants in Bonilla v. City of New York, whose ongoing fact discovery was continued and whose discovery disputes were set for a case-management conference.
What happened
Bonilla v. City of New York concerns disputes over discovery while the defendants’ motion to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint remained pending. The plaintiff’s attorney asked the court to address alleged failures involving interrogatory responses, deposition witnesses, requests for admissions, and a missing deposition exhibit.
The plaintiff argued that the defendants had provided inadequate or late responses and had raised new objections to depositions. The defendants said they had worked in good faith to narrow the requests and believed the proposed depositions were improper. The opinion does not decide the pending motion to dismiss or the parties’ underlying constitutional claims.
Judge Katharine H. Parker ordered the parties to discuss the discovery disputes at a case-management conference, allowed fact discovery to continue until that conference, and scheduled a telephone conference for September 13, 2023, at 12:30 p.m.
The detailed version
- Bonilla v. City of New York · No. 1:22-cv-07113
- Analisa Torres
- Sept. 5, 2023
Background
The plaintiff’s counsel submitted a letter stating that the parties had met and conferred about unresolved discovery disputes. The letter noted that the defendants’ motion to dismiss the Third Amended Complaint was pending, but that the court had ordered discovery to proceed. The case-management schedule set August 24, 2023, as the deposition-completion date and September 7, 2023, as the fact-discovery deadline.
Parties’ Positions
The plaintiff asked the court to intervene regarding several matters. She asserted that the defendants had not adequately answered interrogatories concerning religious-exemption requests from the New York City public-school vaccination requirement; had not provided substantive responses to requests for admissions; had objected at the last minute to previously noticed depositions; and had not supplied a missing exhibit from a deposition transcript. The plaintiff also argued that the defendants’ objections had been waived and that the remaining discovery was important to her claims.
The defendants stated that the constitutionality of the vaccination order had already been addressed by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. They also described the plaintiff’s case as having expanded through multiple amendments and said that the plaintiff had served extensive discovery requests, including document demands and deposition notices. The defendants said they had worked to narrow the deposition requests and had ultimately concluded that the requested witnesses were improper, while remaining willing to seek more time to address other discovery issues.
Court’s Action
Judge Katharine H. Parker ordered that the discovery disputes would be discussed at a case-management conference. The court directed that fact discovery continue until that conference and scheduled a telephonic conference for September 13, 2023, at 12:30 p.m. The order did not decide the pending motion to dismiss, the constitutionality of the vaccination order, or the parties’ discovery disputes on the merits.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.