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Sigrid S. McCawley Telephone: (954) 377 -4223 Email: smccawley@bsfllp.com May 7, 2020 VIA ECF The Honorable Debra Freeman Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse 500 Pearl St. New York, NY 10007-1312 Re: Juliette Bryant v. Darren K. Indyke & Richard D. Kahn, 19-10479-ALC-DCF Dear Judge Freeman: We write on behalf of Plaintiff Juliette Bryant in the above-captioned litigation. Pursuant to Individual Rule II.A and Local Civil Rule 37.2, Plaintiff respectfully requests a pre-motion conference on Plaintiff’s anticipated motion to compel Defendants Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn (1) to produce responsive documents from the Relevant Period as defined in Plaintiff’s discovery requests; (2) to produce documents responsive to Plaintiff’s requests, not simply documents that directly mention Plaintiff’s name; and (3) to respond to Plaintiff’s interrogatories. 1 The Court has made clear that discovery in this case would not be stayed pending the approval of the claims administration program or a motion to dismiss absent a contrary order from the Court. See Tr. of Nov. 21, 2019 Conf. at 26:10-12. Yet by failing to comply with their clear and unequivocal discovery obligations, including not producing a single document to date, Defendants are attempting to grant themselves a de facto stay of discovery. Defendants have provided no basis for their delay. I. Background Plaintiff alleges that Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators operated a decades-long sex-trafficking scheme by which they recruited young women for sexual abuse. Compl. ¶¶ 27, 28. Plaintiff was one of those women. Epstein and his associates trafficked her from South Africa in 2002 and sexually abused her for several years thereafter in New York, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, New Mexico, and France. Id. ¶¶ 41, 55. After years of suffering in silence due to fear and Epstein’s psychological manipulation, she filed a complaint against Defendants on November 14, 2019. On January 23, 2020, the parties exchanged initial Rule 26 disclosures. Defendants’ Rule 26 Disclosures were vacuous. Defendants provided the names of two witnesses— Plaintiff and her ex-boyfriend—and stated that they were not aware of any documents, ESI, or tangible things in 1 Pursuant to Individual Rule I.C., Plaintiff states that she conferred in good faith with Defendants about the issues raised in this letter by telephone on April 27, 2020. Case 1:19-cv-10479-ALC-DCF Document 27 Filed 05/07/20 Page 1 of 6 BSF BOIES SCHILLER FLEXNER BOIES SCHI LLER FLEXNER LLP 401 East Las Olas Boulevard. Suite 1200. For t Lauderdale. FL 333011 (t) 954 356 0011 I (f) 954 356 0022 I www.bs fllp.com their possession, custody, or control that they would use to support their defenses. Exhibit A, Jan. 23, 2020 Initial Disclosures of Defendants Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn. In response to Defendants’ lack of information as to what relevant documents were in their possession, custody, or control, on January 28, 2020, Plaintiff sent them a document preservation notice and identified various email accounts used by Jeffrey Epstein. Exhibit B, Jan. 28, 2020 Document Preservation Notice. Defendants responded on February 3, 2020, by stating that they were abiding by all of their discovery obligations, including their preservation obligations. Exhibit C, Feb. 3, 2020 Letter from B. Moskowitz to S. McCawley. On March 10, 2020, Plaintiff served 91 Requests for Production (“RFPs”) and 17 Interrogatories on Defendants (collectively, Plaintiff’s “discovery requests”). In Plaintiff’s interrogatories, she again asked Defendants to identify potential witnesses, in addition to email accounts used by Epstein, telephone numbers used by Epstein, and other information to aid Plaintiff in identifying witnesses and the location of evidence necessary to prove her case. On April 16, 2020, after Plaintiff provided Defendants a week-long extension, Defendants served responses and objections in which they failed to respond to a single Interrogatory (aside from identifying Plaintiff as a witness to her own abuse) and failed to produce a single document. Exhibit D, Defendants’ Apr. 16, 2020 Objections and Responses to Plaintiff’s First Set of Interrogatories; Exhibit E, Defendants’ Apr. 16, 2020 Objections and Responses to Plaintiff’s First Request for Production of Documents. On April 27, 2020, after sending Defendants a letter regarding the clear deficiencies in their responses and objections, Plaintiff met and conferred with Defendants for an hour and a half. See Ex. F, Apr. 20, 2020 Letter from S. McCawley to B. Moskowitz. Defendants stated that they had not yet fully processed the ESI in their possession, had not run any searches on the ESI, and were not in a position to provide information about the ESI, despite having received Plaintiff’s document retention notice in January and Plaintiff’s discovery requests in March. During the meet and confer, Plaintiff also explained her position on the relevance and necessity of each of her discovery requests, and offered to answer any questions that Defendants had about the relevance of any of her requests. Defendants refused to accept the Relevant Period that Plaintiff defined in her discovery requests, and stated that they would only produce documents that reference Plaintiff. They also stated, without providing any legal basis for their position, that they would not produce anything relating to Epstein’s sex trafficking or abuse of other victims. As of today, May 7, 2020, Plaintiff has yet to receive a single document or piece of information responsive to any of her discovery requests, including the documents that specifically reference Plaintiff that Defendants agreed to produce. The only information Defendants have provided to Plaintiff in the course of discovery is their statement that Plaintiff is a witness in this case. Plaintiff has produced more than 10,000 pages of documents responsive to Defendants’ discovery requests to date, and has responded to all of Defendants’ interrogatories to the best of her ability. II. Defendants’ Objection to the Relevant Period is Improper. Defendants have improperly objected to the Relevant Period that Plaintiff defined in her discovery requests as January 1, 2001 to the present. Without providing any legal basis for their Case 1:19-cv-10479-ALC-DCF Document 27 Filed 05/07/20 Page 2 of 6 position, Defendants contend that the relevant time period should be limited to the dates of Plaintiff’s abuse as alleged in the Complaint. 2 Under Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, parties may obtain discovery “regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). “[R]elevance for the purposes of discovery is an extremely broad concept.” Melendez v. Greiner, No. 01 CIV.07888 SAS DF, 2003 WL 22434101, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 23, 2003) (Freeman, J.). This case turns on (1) whether Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked and sexually assaulted Plaintiff and (2) whether Plaintiff’s claims are timely, an affirmative defense that Defendants have already raised in a motion to dismiss. ECF No. 24. Discovery from the Relevant Period as defined by Plaintiff is relevant to both Plaintiff’s claims and Defendants’ statute of limitations defense, and is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Epstein’s sexual trafficking and abuse of Plaintiff began in 2002 and lasted through approximately 2004. But Plaintiff ha