Opinion
99 C 1817
August 22, 2002
Plaintiffs seek reconsideration of my ruling of May 7, 2002, in which I granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs motion to depose four additional witnesses in the interests of justice, denying plaintiffs leave to depose Larry Bazaar and Raphael Perez, Sr. Plaintiffs now put forward another interest of justice argument, seeking to be permitted to depose Messrs. Bazaar and Perez. The interest of justice argument that the plaintiffs advance at this time is essentially that they had a good faith belief that fact discovery was stayed.
The parties will recall that on March 26, 2002, at plaintiffs' request, I reviewed my previous rulings and issued an order correcting plaintiffs' misconceptions that I had stayed fact discovery. At that time, I ruled that if plaintiffs wanted to take additional depositions, they could file a motion arguing that it was in the interest of justice to permit them to do so. In my ruling on that motion, I noted that I considered it remarkable that plaintiffs did not even explicitly raise their interest of justice argument until their reply papers and, even then, I had to do a lot of reading between the lines. Nor did plaintiffs refer to the transcripts of the October 31, 2001 status hearing, as they do in the motion before me now.
Plaintiffs now argue that they should be permitted to depose Messrs. Bazaar and Perez because plaintiffs "justifiably believed" that fact discovery was stayed based on my remarks of October 31, 2001. I find it hard to credit that plaintiffs relied on my remarks of October 31, 2001, since they did not mention those remarks or their reliance on them in their first motion for leave to depose additional witnesses in the interest of justice.
Further, I note that plaintiffs offer no new argument about the critical nature of Larry Bazaar or Raphael Perez to their case, nor do they offer any argument that new information has emerged since their last motion that would tend to suggest the critical nature of the depositions of these two individuals.
Accordingly, plaintiffs' motion requesting reconsideration of leave to depose Larry Bazaar and Raphael Perez, Sr. in the interests of justice [59-1] is DENIED.