Communispond, Inc. v. Kelley And T.C.E. Associates Ll

1998 WL 473951 (S.D. NEW YORK 1998)

Facts

Kelley (D) was an employee at Communispond (P) who trained executives at Kidder Peabody in oral and written presentation skills. D left P's employ in early 1994 and went to work directly for Kidder. During that period, Kidder paid P royalties for D's use of P's training materials. In 1995, D left Kidder and formed his own company TCE. P sued D and TCE alleging infringement of P's copyrights and proprietary materials. The parties proceeded with discovery. D did not respond to a discovery request for four months, and then when he did, he denied the existence of any documents responsive to the requests. P informed the court that D's responses to discovery were deficient and D's counsel was ordered to go back and take another look. Confirmation was sent to P that no documents existed. When D attended one of P's lectures, D discovered that the lectures were taped. P claimed violations of discovery. Videotapes were produced along with additional documents. During deposition, D admitted that he had misrepresented the existence of documents to P and had failed to conduct a discovery search at all for any types of material responsive to P's discovery requests and that D even had in his possession certain materials that were intentionally withheld from P that were responsive to the discovery requests. P moved for sanctions under Rule 37 (b)(2) and 37 (c)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.