Carlyle Aviation Management Limited v. Frontier Airlines, Inc.
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:23-cv-04774
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Carlyle Aviation v. Frontier Airlines, Judge Engelmayer enforced four discovery requests with limits on lawyer communications, privilege logs, and timing.
The order directly affected Carlyle Aviation Management Limited and the other plaintiffs, collectively called Carlyle, and Frontier Airlines, Inc. Frontier had to conduct the required searches and produce responsive material subject to the court’s limitations.
What happened
Carlyle Aviation Management Limited and other plaintiffs asked the court to require Frontier Airlines to collect electronically stored information responding to four discovery requests. The dispute concerned Frontier’s refusal to collect that information and its concern that the requests would be burdensome and costly because lawyers were involved in many communications.
The court enforced all four requests but imposed limits. Frontier did not have to search for or produce communications involving outside lawyers, although it still had to search outside counsel’s records for responsive, non-protected Frontier documents. Frontier had to search communications involving in-house lawyers and produce responsive non-protected material, or non-protected portions of partly protected documents. For withheld documents, Frontier could use a sufficiently detailed category-based privilege log instead of a document-by-document log. The court also required prompt review and production on a schedule accommodating counsel’s holiday plans.
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued the December 12, 2023 order. The order addressed discovery procedures and did not decide the parties’ underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Carlyle Aviation Management Limited v. Frontier Airlines, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-04774
- Paul Engelmayer
- Dec. 12, 2023
Discovery dispute
The court reviewed competing letters concerning Frontier Airlines, Inc.’s refusal to collect electronically stored information responsive to Carlyle’s discovery requests numbered 5, 6, 7, and 9. The court found the requests facially unobjectionable. It also recognized Frontier’s position that, without limitations, responding could be burdensome and impose disproportionate costs because legal counsel played an extensive role in communications concerning the relevant subjects.
Ruling
The court enforced Carlyle’s four requests subject to four limitations:
1. Outside-lawyer communications. Frontier did not have to search for or produce communications to which an outside lawyer was a party. But Frontier still had to search outside counsel’s records for responsive documents of a different kind, such as non-privileged Frontier documents provided to outside counsel, and produce those documents.
2. In-house-lawyer communications. Frontier had to search communications involving in-house counsel. It had to produce responsive documents that were not protected by attorney-client privilege, or the responsive portions of partly privileged documents that could properly be produced. The court explained that in-house counsel may act in both legal and business capacities, so those communications required review.
3. Privilege log. For documents or portions withheld as privileged, Frontier did not have to prepare a separate entry for every document. It could instead provide a categorical privilege log identifying groups of withheld documents. The log had to contain enough detail for Carlyle’s counsel to evaluate whether to challenge the privilege claim or request that the court review the documents privately, including a sample of them.
4. Timing. The court expected the materials to be reviewed and produced promptly, on a schedule agreed upon by the parties that respected and gave deference to counsel’s holiday plans.
Effect of the order
The order resolved a discovery dispute. It did not state that the court decided the merits of the parties’ underlying claims. The court entered the order on December 12, 2023, in New York, New York.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.