In a follow-up to Magistrate Judge Wang’s discovery order last week, in which the court denied defendants Microsoft and OpenAI’s motion to compel discovery for lack of relevance, on Monday Magistrate Judge Wang granted plaintiff New York Times’ motion to compel discovery, in part, to require the production of direct messages from defendants’ employees on X.com.Continue Reading Magistrate Judge Wang: State Law Prohibiting Employers’ Access to Employees’ Social Media Does Not Circumvent Federal Discovery
Magistrate Judge Wang
Magistrate Judge Wang: New York Times’ AI Use Not Relevant to Microsoft’s Fair Use Defense
By Julie Lascano on
On Friday, Magistrate Judge Wang denied a motion to compel discovery brought by defendants Microsoft Corporation and OpenAI in an action relating to defendants’ use of plaintiff New York Times’ copyrighted works to train defendants’ large-language models.
Defendants sought to compel the production of plaintiff’s use of, and statements about, AI tools, asserting the evidence was relevant to their fair use defense. Plaintiff argued that the request was “neither relevant nor proportional to the needs of the case.”Continue Reading Magistrate Judge Wang: New York Times’ AI Use Not Relevant to Microsoft’s Fair Use Defense
Magistrate Judge Wang Warns Against “Protracted Letter-Writing Campaigns” Over Discovery
By Charles Michael on
In an Order last week, Magistrate Judge Wang chided the parties in a terrorism funding case for having filed a joint, 73-page discovery letter, consistent with a pattern of “protracted letter-writing campaigns” that have embroiled the Judge in “day-to-day supervision” of discovery.
She ordered the offending letter stricken, but an an earlier one (at 54 pages) appears to be the type of correspondence sparking the forceful order, in which she cited Charles Dickens’ fictional case Jarndyce v Jarndyce, as illustrating the problem: Continue Reading Magistrate Judge Wang Warns Against “Protracted Letter-Writing Campaigns” Over Discovery
Magistrate Judge Wang: “Sheer Volume” of Deposition Objections Not Enough for Sanctions
By Charles Michael on
In an opinion today, Magistrate Judge Wang denied a motion for sanctions premised on (among other things) the “sheer volume” of objections during two depositions, including, in one instance, a deposition with an objection on approximately 80% of the transcript pages.
Judge Wang concluded that the number of objections alone was not enough, given that the objections were largely appropriate:
Continue Reading Magistrate Judge Wang: “Sheer Volume” of Deposition Objections Not Enough for Sanctions
SDNY Selects Three New Magistrate Judges
By Michael Keough on
The Southern District has announced three new magistrate judges, who will fill the seats being vacated by Magistrate Judges Francis, Ellis, and Peck later this year.
Joining the bench will be Stewart Aaron, of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer; Robert Lehrburger, of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; and Ona Wang, of Baker…