CHICAGO — A federal judge has ruled workers from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s 2018 campaign, who pursued a racial discrimination lawsuit against the governor and his campaign committee, must pay some of the Pritzker campaign's legal bills because attorneys for the workers haven’t fulfilled their discovery obligations.
Attorneys Shay Allen and Jeanette Samuels, both of Chicago, represent a group of black and Latino people who had worked or were still working as field organizers in the Pritzker campaign at the time the lawsuit was filed in 2018. The complaint notes many of the plaintiffs also worked on other high-profile Democratic campaigns, while others worked as activists in other progressive causes and for labor unions.
The lawsuit accused the Pritzker campaign of packing black and Latino campaign workers into majority minority neighborhoods, often in unsafe conditions; denying them benefits and advancement opportunities afforded to white colleagues; and ignoring complaints of racial inequality from minority staffers or terminating those who challenged the alleged conditions, among other allegations. It also accused Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton of defamation for allegedly describing the plaintiffs as “extortionists” in comments to the press about the lawsuit.
In an opinion issued March 26, Judge Virginia Kendall approved sanctions against the plaintiffs’ legal team. Kendall detailed the plaintiffs’ failure to respond to several discovery requests from the defense team — led by William B. Stafford, of the firm of Perkins Coie LLP, of Seattle — including missed deadlines and recurring delays. She detailed the defendants’ multiple attempts to schedule depositions and plaintiffs’ personal conflicts.
On Oct. 15, 2019, the defendants filed a motion asking Kendall to rule the plaintiffs waived their objections to written discovery requests and to compel them to provide certain documents, as well as ordering them to appear for depositions. Kendall agreed, though her opinion detailed further delays and multiple approved extensions of her deadlines.
Ultimately, fact discovery closed June 12, 2020, by which point the defendants had deposed all 12 plaintiffs. The defendants then modified their earlier request for sanctions in a filing dated July 2, 2020.
“This court granted defendants’ motion to compel in full and did not limit its holding to requests for production,” Kendall wrote in an order issued March 26. “Moreover, the court orally ruled that plaintiffs’ objections were waived. It defies logic to suggest plaintiffs could stand on waived objections with respect to interrogatories but not with respect to requests for production.”
Kendall also noted her earlier oral ruling the plaintiffs were to respond to the defense’s deficiency requests, yet they still haven’t supplemented responses to interrogatories. She also pointed to a request to produce documents due by Nov. 8, 2019, that didn’t arrive until Nov. 12, “almost two full weeks after plaintiffs claimed they were in the mail.”
After detailing the way the plaintiffs’ response complicated the defense’s attempts to fully depose each plaintiff, Kendall rejected the plaintiffs’ lawyers “attempt to downplay their behavior” by noting they appeared at the scheduled depositions and didn’t walk out.
“Refusing to schedule depositions in the first instance is at least as effective in impeding discovery. At best, plaintiffs’ counsel were negligent, and this is sufficient for sanctions,” Kendall said. “Yet more accurately, they were truly obstructionist.”
Kendall said the plaintiffs’ lawyers appeared to say they were too busy to comply with her order, but noted they have an ethical obligation to manage caseloads and handle clients competently.
“The snapshot of correspondence offered by defendants suggests plaintiffs’ counsel are infrequently and incompletely responsive if they respond at all,” Kendall wrote. “Indeed, only once defendants’ counsel exhaust their other options and seek this court’s intervention do plaintiffs’ counsel demonstrate any interest in working through the discovery process. This behavior is an abuse both of party and judicial time and resources.”
Kendall ordered the plaintiffs’ counsel to pay reasonable fees for the defense attorneys’ time in preparing the original and amended motion for sanctions, as well as for their discovery work from September through December 2019. She gave the defending attorneys 14 days to submit their fee petition.