Vinci Brands LLC v. Coach Services, Inc.

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK -------------------------------------------------------------X : VINCI BRANDS LLC, : Plaintiff, : : 23 Civ. 5138 (LGS) -against- : : ORDER COACH SERVICES, INC., et al., : Defendant. : : -------------------------------------------------------------X

LORNA G. SCHOFIELD, District Judge: WHEREAS, on April 19, 2024, Plaintiff Vinci Brands LLC (“Vinci”) and Defendant Case-Mate, Inc. (“Case-Mate”) filed a letter in which each party sought an order compelling the other party to produce unredacted text messages; WHEREAS, on April 23, 2024, pursuant to this Court’s order at Dkt. 330, Vinci and Case-Mate each selected fourteen redacted text messages -- seven Vinci-redacted text messages and seven Case-Mate-redacted text messages -- for the Court’s in camera review. Based on the Court’s review of those text messages, it is hereby ORDERED that by May 3, 2024, Vinci shall produce an unredacted version of a single email, consisting of two lines of text, from Bianca Smith at Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP to Kristen Trappett at Onward Brands dated March 20, 2024, at 11:14 P.M., which is at Dkt. 339-1 at the top of page 5 of 6 of the PDF. This email is not protected by the attorney- client privilege because it is not a communication for the purpose of giving or receiving legal advice. It is further ORDERED that by May 8, 2024, Case-Mate shall review its entire document production thus far and remove all redactions except for those protected by the attorney-client privilege or work-product doctrine. See Al Thani v. Hanke, No. 20 Civ. 4765, 2022 WL 1684271, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. May 26, 2022) (“The weight of authority in this Circuit goes against allowing a party to redact information from admittedly responsive and relevant documents based on that party’s unilateral determinations of relevancy.” (citing Christine Asia Co., Ltd. v. Alibaba Grp. Holding Ltd., 327 F.R.D. 52, 54 (S.D.N.Y. 2018) (collecting cases)). Any such redactions shall be reflected on a privilege log to the extent they are not already logged. Dated: May 1, 2024 New York, New York

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE