In Alexander v. New York City Health and Hosp. Corp., No. 156315/2020, 2025 WL 3708596 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Dec. 17, 2025) – a case involving allegations of sex and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environment, constructive discharge, and retaliation – the court, inter alia, granted defendants’ motion to compel discovery responses from plaintiff.
The court provides a comprehensive discussion of how discovery operates in New York court actions:
New York’s disclosure provisions are designed to advance the truth-seeking function of litigation. CPLR § 3101(a) requires “full disclosure of all matter material and necessary in the prosecution or defense of an action.” Where a party “fails to respond to or comply with any request, interrogatory, demand, or order,” the requesting party may move to compel compliance under CPLR § 3124. A motion to compel must be accompanied by a good-faith affirmation pursuant to 22 NYCRR § 202.7, reflecting counsel’s genuine efforts to resolve the dispute.
And a court should not grant a motion to compel absent a demonstrated good-faith effort to resolve the dispute. Here, the record reflects sustained good-faith efforts by Defendants to obtain the Post-EBT discovery, through multiple communications over an extended period.
Plaintiff’s contention that the motion is moot because she served supplemental responses is unavailing where those responses are facially deficient and omit required information. A deficient response is not compliance; nor does the service of cursory answers after motion practice has begun deprive the court of authority to compel legally adequate responses and productions.
Plaintiff’s contention that Defendants failed to comply with the court’s rules is likewise rejected on this record. Defendants demonstrated good-faith attempts to resolve the dispute without motion practice.
In any event, the court’s paramount obligation in discovery supervision is to ensure that disclosure is exchanged in a manner consistent with CPLR article 31–i.e., that disclosure is meaningful, not performative, and that parties do not evade legitimate requests through delay or boilerplate objections.
The Post-EBT Demands were crafted to elicit the documentary and electronic evidence underlying Plaintiff’s deposition testimony, including by quoting testimony and identifying page and line. Against that backdrop, Plaintiff’s uniform objections–asserting, in substance, that requests are “unduly burdensome” and “not likely to lead to relevant information related to the claims”–are not credible as applied to requests that are expressly anchored to Plaintiff’s own narrative of discrimination and her own sworn testimony about the very events and evidence at issue.
Discovery objections must be specific and tailored; they may not be used as a substitute for substantive compliance. A party who objects must still, at a minimum, identify what is being withheld on the basis of the objection and, where privilege is claimed, provide an adequate privilege log–so that the opposing party and the court can evaluate the claim without guesswork. Here, Plaintiff did not provide a privilege log and did not identify whether responsive materials were withheld. That is not a legally sufficient response. Additionally, Plaintiff’s objection to quoted excerpts of her own deposition testimony as “overly broad, vague and ambiguous” is, on its face, incongruent.
The Post-EBT Demands do not ask Plaintiff to interpret an adversary’s characterization; they ask Plaintiff to produce the evidence supporting what Plaintiff herself testified to–evidence that Plaintiff, as the witness, is uniquely positioned to identify, collect, and produce.
Plaintiff refused to conduct or produce an ESI collection of her Instagram account–even though Plaintiff repeatedly claimed Defendant Deygoo obtained photos from Plaintiff’s Instagram. That position cannot be reconciled with the materiality of the issue Plaintiff injected into the case. If Plaintiff intends to rely on allegations concerning what was on her Instagram and how it was accessed or used, discovery targeted to the relevant Instagram content (within reasonable temporal and subject-matter limits) is “material and necessary” within the meaning of CPLR § 3101(a). To be clear: the court is not authorizing an unfocused fishing expedition into every aspect of Plaintiff’s social media. But where a party places a discrete social media account at issue by alleging misuse of images from that account, the opposing party is entitled to obtain the relevant posts, photographs, comments, and related metadata to test those allegations, assess credibility, and evaluate damages and causation.
(Cleaned up.)
The court further explained how a claim of “lost” evidence should be assessed:
If evidence was lost, the circumstances matter: what was lost, when, how, where it was stored, and what steps were taken to preserve, retrieve, or restore it. Basic corroboration (e.g., device replacement records, carrier correspondence, platform notices, or backup/restore logs) is routinely available and must be produced if relied upon to explain nonproduction.
In conclusion, the court ordered plaintiff to “serve and file amended, verified, non-boilerplate written responses” to defendants’ demands, with specific instructions for each of various items.