Desmond v. Taxi Affiliation Servs., LLC
Desmond v. Taxi Affiliation Servs., LLC
2021 WL 4498909 (N.D. Ill. 2021)
January 15, 2021
Weisman, M. David, United States Magistrate Judge
Summary
The court granted the plaintiff's motion to compel responses to requests related to the purchase, sale, and transfer of taxi medallions, the formation of certain LLCs, the payment of the North Fork Loan, a timeline prepared by the defendants, allocations of expenses by Taxi Affiliation Services, management fees paid to the individual defendants, and the formation of New YCA. The requests involved ESI, including a computer server used by YCA, individual defendant's mailboxes, particular shared drives, and workstations.
MICHAEL K. DESMOND, not individually but as Chapter 7 Trustee for the Bankruptcy Estate of YELLOW CAB AFFILIATION, INC., Plaintiff,
v.
TAXI AFFILIATION SERVICES, LLC, TAXI MEDALLION MANAGEMENT LLC, YELLOW CAB ASSOCIATION, INC., PATTON R. CORRIGAN, MICHAEL LEVINE, JOHN MOBERG, GARY SAKATA, and EVAN TESSLER, Defendants
v.
TAXI AFFILIATION SERVICES, LLC, TAXI MEDALLION MANAGEMENT LLC, YELLOW CAB ASSOCIATION, INC., PATTON R. CORRIGAN, MICHAEL LEVINE, JOHN MOBERG, GARY SAKATA, and EVAN TESSLER, Defendants
No. 17 CV 8326
United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division
Signed January 15, 2021
Counsel
Edward Sidney Weil, Jennifer Ann Warner, Matthew T. Hays, John Francis Rhoades, Dykema Gossett PLLC, Chicago, IL, Hugh B. Sloan, Pro Hac Vice, J. Gregory Taylor, Diamond McCarthy Taylor Finley Bryant & Lee LLP, Dallas, TX, Jon Maxwell Beatty, Diamond McCarthy LLP, Houston, TX, for Plaintiff.Robert L. Dawidiuk, Leonard Ernest Hudson, Shawn Michael Collins, Collins Law Firm P.C., Naperville, IL, James M. Catterson, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, New York, NY, for Defendant Taxi Affiliation Services LLC.
Robert L. Dawidiuk, Leonard Ernest Hudson, Shawn Michael Collins, Collins Law Firm P.C., Naperville, IL, for Defendants Michael Levine, Patton R. Corrigan, Evan Tessler, Gary Sakata, John Moberg, Taxi Medallion Management LLC.
Robert L. Dawidiuk, Shawn Michael Collins, Collins Law Firm P.C., Naperville, IL, for Defendants Yellow Cab Association Inc., Yellow Cab Partmers LLC.
Daniel J. Kornstein, Pro Hac Vice, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY, Robert L. Dawidiuk, Shawn Michael Collins, Collins Law Firm P.C., Naperville, IL, Peter Vincent Baugher, Baugher Dispute Resolution LLC, Chicago, IL, for Defendants Yellow Group LLC, Yellow Medallion Holdings LLC, CL Medallion Holdings LLC, People Mover LLC.
Weisman, M. David, United States Magistrate Judge
ORDER
*1 The case is before the Court on plaintiff's motion to compel document production and to deem requests admitted. For the reasons set forth below, the motion [219] is granted in part and denied in part.[1]
Document Requests
Plaintiff seeks “the TAS general ledger from for [sic] years 2005 to 2011” (request 9) and documents relating to: (1) the purchase, sale, and transfer of taxi medallions (requests 1, 6, 7C, 7D, 7E, 7F, 8A-G, 8I); (2) the formation of Yellow Group, LLC, Yellow Medallion Holdings, LLC, CL Medallion Holdings, LLC, Taxi Affiliation Services, LLC, Taxi Works, LLC, and Taxi Medallion Management, LLC (requests 2, 4, 7A); (3) the payment of the North Fork Loan (requests 7B, 8H, 8J, 8K, 27-30, 33); (4) “Yellow Structure and Debt timeline from 1996-2007,” which defendants prepared and submitted earlier in this litigation (requests 3, 17-22, 25-26); (5) allocations of expenses or other charges by Taxi Affiliation Services (“TAS”) to Yellow Cab Affiliation, Inc. and the other taxicab affiliations affiliated with TAS from 2006 to March 2015 (request 36); (6) management fees TAS paid to the individual defendants from January 1, 2005 to March 18, 2015 (request 13); and (7) the formation of New YCA, payment of dues for affiliation with New YCA, or the termination of New YCA (requests 31, 32).
The Court agrees with defendants that the medallion-related and North Fork loan-related requests (Nos. 1, 6, 7B, 7C, 7D, 7E, 7F, 8A-8K) are duplicative of requests plaintiffs made in their first request for production of documents. (See ECF 113-9, Nos. 15-21.) The same is true for plaintiff's request for documents related to the formation of Taxi Affiliation Services, LLC (part of request 7A). (See ECF 113-9, No. 26.) Therefore, plaintiff's motion to compel responses to these requests is denied.
Plaintiff's history of discovery practices in this case merits some review because it is that history which informs our decision here.[2] The complaint was filed in November 2017, and after initial motion practice, the matter was referred to this Court for discovery supervision in late 2018. By early 2019, defendants had located and agreed to turn over approximately 48 banker boxes of records belonging to YCA and the computer server used by YCA. Defendants had also gathered and organized approximately 500 gigabytes of electronically stored information (approximately 1.3 million documents) controlled by defendants, and retained a vendor for ESI production purposes. (ECF 70.)
*2 In spring 2019, a discovery plan seemed to be taking place. The parties were discussing proposed ESI protocols, and confirming that plaintiff had obtained all documents of the former YCA that may have been in defendants' possession. (ECF 73.) By early summer, things began to turn south. The parties were unable to reach agreement on ESI terms and custodians, with plaintiff proposing hundreds of search terms, many including the defendants' names within 50 words of relatively benign words such as “balance,” “cash,” “lawsuit,” etc. (ECF 78-3.) We attempted to give guidance to plaintiff to help move discovery[3] along, noting our concern as to plaintiff's lack of identified custodians in the ESI searches, and plaintiff's inartful search term choices. (ECF 80.) The balance of the 2019 summer did not cure the parties' inability to move forward in discovery.
In fall 2019, we abandoned the effort to produce ESI through the MIDP and invited the parties to engage in traditional discovery. Plaintiff sought particular ESI sources, including individual defendant's mailboxes, particular shared drives, and workstations, which we ordered defendants to locate and produce, if found. (ECF 92.) Plaintiff sought relief from this Court to access a server used by YCA, and we obliged by directing defendants to cooperate in this effort. (ECF 92, 103.)
The parties' pursuit of traditional discovery, however, proved no more productive. At a hearing in September 2019, the Court reviewed in detail its concerns with plaintiff's approach to answering discovery propounded by defendants, dissecting with great particularity plaintiff's use of non-applicable and nonsensical boilerplate objections. (See ECF 94 at 29-31, 35-36.) The Court then gave the parties until November 29, 2019 to file any motions to compel related to outstanding document requests. (ECF 111.) Yet, despite the Court's critical review of the approach that plaintiff originally took in answering defendants' discovery requests, and after various competing discovery motions were filed (ECF 112, 113, 116, 123), plaintiff engaged in similar discovery abuses in his supplemental responses to defendants' discovery requests. (ECF 173, 206.)
At a hearing on January 28, 2020, wherein this Court was to resolve competing discovery motions, the Court denied plaintiff's motion to compel certain discovery responses in light of plaintiff's discovery abuses, and imposed a discovery sanction that defendants did not have to answer any of plaintiff's outstanding discovery requests until plaintiff properly responded to defendants' outstanding discovery. (ECF 173.) After initially denying plaintiff's motion, the Court allowed plaintiff, at his request, to withdraw his motions to compel. (Id.)
The pandemic hit, and the concomitant interruption in normal activities delayed matters more. In May 2020, the parties reported that they had made some progress on discovery and were attempting to work through remaining discovery issues. (ECF 195, 196.) On May 18, 2020, based on the potential areas of disagreement raised in the parties' status report, the Court ordered that “any motions to compel are to be filed no later than July 2, 2020.” (ECF 197.) On July 2, 2020, plaintiff filed a motion to compel, which once again sought to compel responses to plaintiff's September 25, 2019 document requests. Yet, as noted, plaintiff abandoned his efforts to compel a response to these document requests by withdrawing the motion. The July 2, 2020 order was not an invitation for plaintiff to pursue prior discovery motions that he had abandoned. Rather, the Court was trying to “clean-up” any remaining discovery issues that the Court had not previously resolved, or the parties had not previously abandoned. (ECF 205, 214.) As a result, the Court denied plaintiff's motion to compel at that time, as well as plaintiff's request for this Court to reconsider its ruling against plaintiff based on timeliness issues. (Id.)
*3 We are not persuaded by plaintiff's third attempt to compel responses to discovery that plaintiff previously abandoned.
Beyond the timeliness of plaintiff's requested relief as to some discovery requests, the Court also agrees with defendants that a number of requests seek documents not relevant to plaintiff's claims, including: (1) the portion of request 7A seeking documents related to the formation of Taxi Works, LLC because Taxi Works, LLC is not a party to this litigation and there are no claims involving this entity; (2) requests 3, 17-22,[4] and 25-26, which relate to the timeline produced by defendants (ECF 219-4) and seek documents involving non-parties and/or transactions pre-dating the Jacobs accident because plaintiff's theory of fraud is premised on conduct engaged in by defendants following the Jacobs accident (ECF 62 at 3); and (3) the portion of request 13 that seeks documents related to management fees paid to the individual defendants by companies “affiliated” with YCA or TAS because, as phrased, the request is insufficiently tailored to relevant matters. Moreover, defendants say they produced in the bankruptcy proceeding all documents responsive to request 36. (See ECF 219-3 at 38.) Accordingly, plaintiff's motion to compel responses to these requests is denied.
The remaining requests, however, seek relevant documents and are not duplicative of plaintiff's previous requests. Thus, the Court grants plaintiff's motion to compel responses to requests 2, 4, the portion of 7A relating to the formation of Taxi Medallion Management, LLC, 9, the portion of 13 related to management fees paid by TAS to the individual defendants, and 27-33.
Requests for Admission
Plaintiff asks the Court to deem defendants to have admitted various facts asserted in his requests for admission because defendants objected to, rather than admitted or denied, those facts.[5] However, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36 expressly contemplates that objections may be asserted in response to requests to admit. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 36(a)(3) (“A matter is admitted unless, within 30 days after being served, the party to whom the request is directed serves on the requesting party a written answer or objection addressed to the matter and signed by the party or its attorney.”) (emphasis added). Moreover, if the requesting party believes an objection is unfounded, the Rule sets forth a procedure for challenging it:
The requesting party may move to determine the sufficiency of an answer or objection. Unless the court finds an objection justified, it must order that an answer be served. On finding that an answer does not comply with this rule, the court may order either that the matter is admitted or that an amended answer be served.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 36(a)(6). Plaintiff is not, however, asking for a ruling on the propriety of defendants' objections. Rather, he is asking the Court to deem defendants to have admitted the requests to which they objected. (See ECF 219 at 13.) Because that is not an appropriate request under the Rule, the Court denies it.
*4 SO ORDERED.
Footnotes
In connection with plaintiff's motion to compel, both sides filed so-called “status reports” outlining proceedings before the bankruptcy court to remove the plaintiff, Michael Desmond, as the trustee. (ECF 226, 230-1.) The Court has reviewed both pleadings, and more importantly, the oral ruling of Judge Doyle. Judge Doyle's denial of the motion, and her reasoning for her decision are not relevant, generally speaking, to the discovery disputes before this Court.
The Court agrees with plaintiff that “these requests [are] relevant to claims and defenses in this lawsuit.” (ECF 219 at 7.) But, for the reasons explained herein, plaintiff abandoned his claim to these documents when, nearly one year ago, he withdrew his motion to compel responses to his first set of documents requests, which contained the same requests. (See ECF 173.)
The term “discovery” is a bit of a misnomer, as these disputes were part of the court's Mandatory Initial Discovery Program. By fall 2019, we abandoned the MIDP practice altogether, noting that the goal of the program, to expedite discovery, was not being met. (ECF 92.)
In any event, defendants said they have no documents responsive to request 17. (See ECF 219-3 at 26.)
The facts plaintiff asks to have deemed admitted are in requests 19-21, 23-25, 28, 29, 31, 34-51, 54, 59, and 61.