Plaintiffs Corey Briskin and Nicholas Maggipinto filed the suit in May 2024, alleging the city unlawfully denied IVF benefits to gay male employees and their spouses.
The dispute centered on the city’s repeated failure to produce electronically stored information (ESI) despite court orders. Plaintiffs served their first set of discovery requests in October 2024, extending the response deadline to December 23, 2024. The city responded by stating it was conducting a search for responsive documents but failed to produce any within the promised 30 days.
During a meet-and-confer in early 2025, the city disclosed it had not actually begun searching for responsive ESI, contrary to its earlier representations. The city further stated it would not begin searches until plaintiffs proposed specific search terms.
By June 2025, the parties agreed on search terms and custodians for the Office of Labor Relations, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and the Office of the Mayor. The court granted a six-month extension in July 2025, setting a fact discovery deadline of July 16, 2026.
At an October 2025 case management conference, the city represented it had collected documents and started the e-discovery process, identifying approximately 60,000 potentially responsive documents from the Office of Labor Relations. The court expressed concern that no ESI had been produced in over a year and ordered the city to begin rolling productions immediately, aiming for completion of January 2026.
Judge Vargas warned the city that failure to comply would result in sanctions.
Despite the order, the city failed to produce any ESI by January 31, 2026. At a February 2026 status conference, the city’s counsel, Shemori Corinthian, represented that “several hundred documents” were ready for production. However, the city did not make its first production until March 6, 2026, consisting of only 49 documents from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
During the February conference, the city also revealed for the first time it was using technology-assisted review (TAR) but provided no details on the tool or its application. Plaintiffs argued this violated previously negotiated e-discovery protocols.
Judge Vargas admonished the city, stating, “this process needs to be put to right first. There needs to be protocols, the protocols need to be followed, and then there needs to be rolling productions, which is what I ordered originally.”
The court granted the city further extensions, with the city making rolling productions in March and April 2026. By early May 2026, the city had produced almost the entirety of its ESI.
In her May 11 opinion, Judge Vargas found the city’s noncompliance willful. She noted the city failed to abide by clear orders, ignored warnings about resource allocation, and made representations to the court that proved inaccurate.
“Unless Ms. Corinthian misrepresented to the Court that several hundred documents were ready for production on February 2, 2026, the only reasonable inference to draw is that Defendants’ month-long noncompliance with the Court’s order for rolling productions was willful,” Vargas wrote.
The court rejected plaintiffs’ requests for more severe sanctions, such as precluding the city from using documents produced after January 31, 2026, or compelling responses to specific interrogatories. Vargas found such measures unnecessary because the delay did not prejudice plaintiffs on the merits, especially since the city had nearly completed its ESI production.
Instead, the court ordered the city to pay plaintiffs’ reasonable expenses and attorneys’ fees incurred due to the discovery failures. The parties are directed to discuss settlement of these fees, with plaintiffs to file a fee application within 30 days if negotiations fail.
The case continues with fact discovery ongoing.