Opinion
04 Civ. 0398 (BSJ) (MHD).
July 12, 2006
MEMORANDUM ORDER
The parties have submitted several requests for adjustment of the discovery schedule. We address them and one other scheduling matter in turn.
I.
By prior order we granted a request by defendant for a brief additional session of plaintiff's deposition. (Endorsed Order dated July 10, 2006). We did not specify a time-frame, however, for its completion. That session is to be done by no later than July 20, 2006.
II.
Defendant has asked for an extension of the expired fact discovery schedule in order to depose plaintiff's treating physicians because plaintiff has indicated that she may call them at trial. (July 11, 2006 letter to the Court from Lloyd B. Chinn, Esq.). That request is denied. Fact discovery ended, under the revised scheduling order, on June 30, 2006 (Order dated March 6, 2006, at ¶ 1, and defendant offers no persuasive reason why it did not avail itself of the opportunity to notice those depositions within the very extended period for pre-trial discovery. This is not a case in which defendants were unaware of the existence of these potential witnesses, and it simply chose not to pursue their testimony. Under these circumstances no relief is warranted.
III.
Plaintiff has requested, nunc pro tunc, a six-week adjournment of the deadline for designation of experts and the submission of an expert report — from June 30, 2006 to August 12, 2006 — to allow her to hire a "social scientist" to testify about gender stereotyping. (July 7, 2006 letter to the Court from Anne L. Clark, Esq., at 6). This untimely request is denied for lack of any showing of good cause to disrupt the already elongated discovery schedule. Plaintiff suggests that the desirability of hiring such an expert only became apparent in the closing days of fact discovery based on certain testimony by principals at the defendant firm. The record demonstrates otherwise. The nature of plaintiff's allegations from the very outset of the case, and indeed her assertions before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prior to the lawsuit, make it painfully obvious that she was complaining about views held by decision-makers at the firm concerning her commitment to the firm and that these views were allegedly linked to her maternal status and gender. The appropriateness of acquiring expert testimony in the area that she now targets should have been evident from the start of this lawsuit, and her failure to pursue this matter until a week after her expert designations and reports were due is entirely unjustified.
In this regard we reject plaintiff's assertion that this request should be granted because it will not prejudice defendant. According to plaintiff this is so because defendant can be given further time, until mid-September, to respond to the expert who might eventually appear for plaintiff. In effect, plaintiff proposes a two-month adjournment of the completion of pretirsal proceedings. The short answer is that the court's authority to manage discovery is designed to serve both the interests of the parties and the public interest in the prompt and efficient disposition of cases, an interest reflected, for example, in the admonitions of the Civil Justice Reform Act, 28 U.S.C. § 471 (requiring preparation of expense-and-delay-reduction plans to "ensure just, speedy and inexpensive resolution of civil disputes"). By ignoring the deadline for designation of experts and failing even to make a timely request for a six-week extension, and by also failing to justify the untimeliness of her belated request, plaintiff completely fails to carry her burden of persuasion or to make a case for setting aside the case-management requirements long ago imposed in this matter.
Currently the deadline to complete all expert discovery — including depositions — is July 31, 2006. (March 6, 2006 Order at ¶ 3).
IV.
Finally, we reaffirm that the balance of the pre-trial schedule set out in our March 6, 2006 order remains in effect.