Opinion
570756/03.
Decided April 8, 2004.
Defendant appeals from that portion of an order of the Civil Court, New York County, entered August 14, 2003 (Cynthia S. Kern, J.) which denied in part its motion to compel document production and granted in part plaintiff's cross motion to compel document production.
Order entered August 14, 2003 (Cynthia S. Kern, J.) affirmed, with $10 costs.
PRESENT: HON. LUCINDO SUAREZ, P.J., HON. WILLIAM P. McCOOE, HON. MARTIN SCHOENFELD, Justices.
A trial court is vested with broad discretion to supervise the discovery process, and its determinations in that respect will not be disturbed in the absence of demonstrated abuse ( see, Ulico Cas. Co. v. Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman Dicker, 1 AD3d 223, 224). We find no such abuse of discretion in the court's denial of that portion of defendant's motion to compel plaintiff to provide "a list of every claim of dental malpractice filed against him from 1992 to the present." The defendant's sweeping discovery demand was properly rejected, where defendant failed to persuasively show why such information is material and necessary to its defense of plaintiff's claim for lost earnings attributable to the 1997 airline incident giving rise to the within negligence action, and where, as defendant now acknowledges, at least "some" of the information sought is "available from public records" and has already been obtained. Nor was it an abuse of discretion to require defendant to produce photographs or other information concerning the identity of its employees who may have witnessed the incident, a directive consistent with a prior, unheeded discovery order.
This constitutes the decision and order of the court.