Randall Co. LLC v. 281 Broadway Holdings LLC

132 A.D.3d 452, 17 N.Y.S.3d 636

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: October 13, 2015
• Docket: 15784N 100982/08
• Status: Published

Opinion

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Charles E. Ramos, J.), entered on or about April 16, 2015, which denied defendants’ motion for a protective order, and directed defense counsel to produce its legal bills, unanimously reversed, on the law and in the exercise of discretion, without costs, and the motion granted.

Although “recourse to an opposing attorney’s time sheets may ... be proper in an appropriate case” (Match v Match, 168 AD2d 226, 227 [1st Dept 1990]), plaintiff’s request is premature. It has not made a sufficient showing of the relevance of such records at the present stage of the proceedings (M atter of Goldstick, 177 AD2d 225, 247 [1st Dept 1992]).

Should plaintiff establish at a later juncture the requisite need for defendants’ legal bills, we note that “bills detailing the work done by the attorneys are clearly privileged material” (De La Roche v De La Roche, 209 AD2d 157, 158 [1st Dept 1994] [internal quotation marks omitted]) and are therefore subject to redaction (Teich v Teich, 245 AD2d 41 [1st Dept 1997]).

We have considered and rejected plaintiff’s remaining contentions.

Concur — Gonzalez, P.J., Mazzarelli, Sweeny, Richter and Manzanet-Daniels, JJ.