Vinci Brands LLC v. Coach Services, Inc.
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:23-cv-05138
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Vinci Brands v. Coach Services, Judge Schofield modified discovery deadlines and document-production periods after Case-Mate sought reconsideration of an earlier discovery order.
Case-Mate, Inc. was required to make the specified document productions on the revised schedule. Vinci Brands LLC received the revised discovery schedule and was required to address proportionality if it renewed certain requests. The order concerns discovery obligations in the case involving the named parties and other defendants.
What happened
In Vinci Brands LLC v. Coach Services, Inc., Case-Mate asked the court to reconsider parts of an earlier order requiring it to produce documents and communications in the parties’ discovery dispute. Case-Mate said the requests were too broad and could not be completed by the existing deadline.
Case-Mate argued that producing all communications with KSNY and broad internal communications would impose disproportionate costs, create risks involving confidential and privileged information, and require reviewing a very large volume of electronic data. It asked the court to narrow the time periods, cap its electronic-discovery work at 300 hours, and extend the production deadline to March 31, 2024.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield’s March 13, 2024 order required Case-Mate to produce communications with KSNY from March 1 through July 30, 2023, and internal communications relating to specified entities from January 1 through August 18, 2023. The court extended production through March 22, 2024, while requiring substantial interim productions on March 15 and March 20; the provided text does not clearly show the completed ruling on Case-Mate’s request for a 300-hour cap.
The detailed version
- Vinci Brands LLC v. Coach Services, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-05138
- Lorna Schofield
- Mar. 13, 2024
Background
The opinion text includes Case-Mate, Inc.’s letter asking Judge Schofield to reconsider portions of a March 12, 2024 discovery order. The earlier order required Case-Mate to produce several categories of documents, including communications with KSNY; internal communications relating to Vinci, Incase, Siena, or KSNY; communications with Siena Lending or DA Davidson; documents identified by revised search terms; materials concerning Case-Mate and KSNY’s license negotiations; and communications with Vinci’s suppliers, vendors, and customers. The earlier order also required Case-Mate to identify documents it had produced in response to prior court directives.
Case-Mate said it was working to complete some of the ordered production but could not complete all of it by March 15, 2024. It argued that the requests for broad communications and text messages were not proportional to the needs of the case under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), which requires discovery to balance likely usefulness against burden and expense. Case-Mate cited the volume of electronic data, the need to review confidential and potentially privileged material, the short deadline, and its concerns about disclosures of its confidential information. It also argued that some requested communications covered periods or subjects that were not important to the claims against it.
Case-Mate requested four changes: limiting communications with KSNY to March 1 through July 30, 2023; limiting internal communications relating to Vinci, Incase, Siena, or KSNY to January 1 through July 30, 2023; capping its electronic-discovery work at 300 hours; and extending the production deadline through March 31, 2024.
Court’s action
The provided court-order text states that Case-Mate shall produce all correspondence, including text messages, between Case-Mate and KSNY from March 1, 2023, through July 30, 2023. It also states that Case-Mate shall produce internal correspondence, including text messages, relating to Vinci, Incase, Siena, or KSNY from January 1, 2023, through August 18, 2023. The text therefore shows that the court set specific production periods, including an August 18 cutoff for the internal communications category.
The court extended Case-Mate’s time for production through March 22, 2024, and required substantial interim productions by March 15 and March 20, 2024. The order also directed that, if Vinci sought to renew its request for the communications described in the order or in an earlier discovery ruling, Vinci had to submit a letter addressing the proportionality factors in Rule 26(b)(1) and respond to Case-Mate’s proposed limitation involving the search string “licens* w/3 exclusive.”
The provided text ends after stating that Case-Mate’s request for a 300-hour cap on electronic-discovery hours “is,” so it does not clearly reveal the completed disposition of that request. The text also does not provide a complete, clearly legible statement of whether the reconsideration request was granted in part or denied in part. Judge Lorna G. Schofield signed the order on March 13, 2024.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.