Russell v. T-Mobile USA Inc

• Court: District Court, W.D. Washington
• Decided: April 10, 2025
• Docket: 2:24-cv-00255
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 8 WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE 9 10 SANDRA RUSSELL, CASE NO. 2:24-cv-00255-MJP 11 Plaintiff, ORDER DENYING RECONSIDERATION 12 v. 13 T-MOBILE USA, INC., 14 Defendant. 15 16 This Motion comes before the Court on Defendant T-Mobile USA, Inc.’s Motion for 17 Partial Reconsideration of the Court’s March 21, 2025, Order on Discovery Motions. (Dkt. No. 18 59.) Having reviewed the Motion and all supporting materials, the Court DENIES the Motion. 19 Motions for reconsideration are disfavored. Local Civil Rule 7(h)(1). “The court will 20 ordinarily deny such motions in the absence of a showing of manifest error in the prior ruling or 21 a showing of new facts or legal authority which could not have been brought to its attention 22 earlier with reasonable diligence.” Id. Defendant seeks reconsideration of the Court’s Order on 23 Discovery Motions (Dkt. No. 52), on the grounds that the Court “erred and/or reconsideration is 24 1 warranted based on new facts not previously considered.” (Mot. at 3.) The Court addresses both 2 claims in turn. 3 Defendant first asserts that the Court committed manifest error by not considering the 4 workload and availability of its counsel “when finding that attorney’s fees were warranted based

5 primarily on T-Mobile’s references to holiday scheduling.” (Mot. at 3.) This is incorrect for a 6 number of reasons. First, Defendant ignores one of the Court’s bases for granting fees. Besides 7 “disagree[ing] with Defendant’s overreliance on holidays as justification for its failure to 8 participate in discovery,” the Order also found that Defendant’s unilateral “refus[al] to comply 9 with discovery by declining to produce a 30(b)(6) witness.” (Order at 7.) Defendant argued that 10 despite the case scheduling order listing January 24, 2025, the Court had “contemplated that the 11 parties would not be issuing new discovery” after the December 26, 2024, discovery motion 12 deadline, and therefore they were justified in refusing to respond to Plaintiff’s Rule 30(b)(6) 13 notice by designating corporate representatives. (Dkt. No. 36 at 5–6.) The Court disagreed, 14 finding it was “neither reasonable nor substantially justified for Defendant to unilaterally end the

15 discovery process based on its own assumptions, particularly when those assumptions 16 contradict” the case scheduling order. (Order at 8.) Defendant’s Motion does not discuss—let 17 alone assign error to—this basis for the imposition of fees. 18 Second, Defendant is incorrect in assuming that the Court did not consider the facts 19 relevant to the record. Specifically, Defendant relies on the Declaration of Giancarlo Urey (Dkt. 20 No. 36-1) as evidence that Attorneys Urey and Loberstein were “working hard to complete 21 discovery in [this] case.” (Mot. at 2.) The Court notes that while the Urey Declaration shows that 22 the two attorneys billed nearly 120 hours between January 2 through January 10, 2025, it does 23 not specify whether those hours were billed to this client or matter. But even if the Urey

24 1 Declaration did go into such granular detail, it would not change the Court’s determination that 2 Defendant’s decision to cut off discovery prior to the date set by the case scheduling order 3 warranted the award of Plaintiff’s costs and attorneys fees incurred in relation to bringing the 4 motion.

5 Defendant next points to the Declaration of Portia Moore (Dkt. No. 60), as “information 6 . . . now relevant for the Court to consider” in regards to attorney fees. (Mot. at 4.) “A motion for 7 reconsideration ‘may not be used to raise arguments or present evidence for the first time when 8 they could reasonably have been raised earlier in the litigation.’” Marlyn Natraceuticals, Inc. v. 9 Mucos Pharma GmbH & Co., 571 F.3d 873, 880 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Kona Enters., Inc. v. 10 Estate of Bishop, 229 F.3d 877, 890 (9th Cir. 2000)). While the Court sympathizes with 11 Attorney Moore, the the information pertaining to her unavailability was known and able to be 12 raised in Defendant’s response brief. It was not. Attorney Moore or her team could have made 13 the Court aware of her circumstances (through document sealing so it would not appear on the 14 public record) and then requested a change to the schedule to prepare their 30(b)(6) witnesses.

15 They did not. Instead, they made Plaintiff move the Court for relief. Therefore, the Court will not 16 reconsider the Order on the basis of the previously-existing evidence newly supplied in the 17 Moore Declaration. 18 Defendant presents no “newly discovered evidence,” “clear error,” or “intervening 19 change in the controlling law” to warrant reconsideration of the Court’s existing ruling. See 20 Marlyn Natraceuticals, 571 F.3d at 880. The Motion is DENIED. 21 The clerk is ordered to provide copies of this order to all counsel. 22 //

23 //

24 1 Dated April 10, 2025. A 2 3 Marsha J. Pechman United States Senior District Judge 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24