Justice Laurence Love and Justice Alexander Tisch — The two new judges recently appointed to oversee all New York City CVA cases — have jointly entered a second amended Confidentiality Order, which is incorporated into the Case Management Orders ("CMOs") that govern all CVA cases in the five boroughs.1
The two CMOs previously entered by Justice George Silver, who had previously been managing all of the CVA cases and has since retired, are comprehensive and govern all pre-trial proceedings. Among other things, the CMOs set forth pleading deadlines and provide Standard Automatic Disclosures, a Common Demand for A Bill of Particulars, and Standard Combined Discovery Demands, as well as timing for responding to such automatic discovery demands.
The amended Confidentiality Order just entered includes several important changes that Defense Liaison Counsel has been seeking,2 as follows:
- Most significantly, the amended Confidentiality Order limits to whom confidential documents produced in a CVA action may be provided. Under the prior Confidentiality Order, such documents could be produced to anyone "involved in the prosecution, defense, or settlement of a civil claim related to allegations of child sexual abuse involving one or more of the same parties or one or more of the same alleged abusers."
- The amended Confidentiality Order no longer allows that. Instead, it only permits a receiving party to share any confidential disclosure with other parties in another CVA action, where the other action involves "the same alleged abuser."
- The amended order also rescinds provisions that had placed significant burdens on producing parties to (i) redact any references to plaintiffs that had filed under a pseudonym and (ii) create a list of any "unrepresented survivors" referenced in the material produced, including a mechanism for the Court or other designated personnel appointed by the Court, counsel to contact those individuals.
Since Justices Love and Tisch have been assigned to manage the CVA cases, they have started issuing decisions on the large backlog of pending motions to dismiss (largely denying the motions), without entertaining oral argument, in an effort to finally push the CVA cases along after the motions have been pending for a significant period of time.
We can therefore expect that the CVA cases will very soon be quickly involved in document discovery. Once a defendant's motion to dismiss is denied, the defendant has to formally respond to the allegations in the complaint by filing an answer. After the answer is filed, under the CMO, the plaintiff will have a month to produce its documentary evidence, including medical records (or authorizations for defendants to obtain those records directly from providers). Defendants will then have a month to produce any relevant documents and school records they may have. After that, both plaintiffs and defendants will have 40 days to serve responses and/or objections to the Standard Combined Demands included in the CMO.
On the horizon, there may be some changes to the existing CMOs concerning how discovery is going to proceed in CVA cases once a complaint is answered, including with respect discovery timelines and periodic case management conferences.
Footnotes
1. Our alert regarding CMO #1 is available here. Our alert concerning CMO #2 is available here.
2. Defense Liaison Counsel had challenged the initial Confidentiality Order, including appealing some of its provisions to the Appellate Division First Department.
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