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

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

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Nature of the Case

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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.