Moore v. Toyota Motor Corporation et al

Filing 102

ORDER AND REASONS denying 99 Motion to Stay. Signed by Judge Sarah S. Vance on 8/15/2018. (cg)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
ROBERT L. MOORE

CIVIL ACTION

VERSUS

NO. 17-1379

TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION,
ET AL.

SECTION “R” (5)

ORDER AND REASONS
Defendants Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., Toyota Motor
Corporation, Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America,
Inc., and Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. move to stay discovery and defendants’
discovery deadlines. 1 Defendants’ motion is denied.
A district court has inherent power to “control the disposition of the
causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel,
and for litigants.” Landis v. N. Am. Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254 (1936). This
authority includes the district court’s wide discretion to stay a pending
matter to control the course of litigation. In re Ramu Corp., 903 F.2d 312,
318 (5th Cir. 1990). Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c), “a court
may stay discovery for ‘good cause,’ such as a finding that further discovery
will impose undue burden or expense without aiding the resolution of the

1

R. Doc. 99.

dispositive motions.” Fujita v. United States, 416 F. App’x 400, 402 (5th Cir.
2011).
Defendants state that good cause exists because plaintiff Robert L.
Moore has failed to comply with the deadline to furnish his expert disclosures
set forth in the Court’s scheduling order,2 and because defendant’s motion
for summary judgment is pending. 3 Defendants argue that because plaintiff
has failed to make his expert disclosures, plaintiff’s claims are unsupported
and unspecified, and requiring defendants to make their disclosures “would
cause [them] to incur unnecessary time and expense.”4 But plaintiff’s failure
to comply with the Court’s scheduling order does not transform defendants’
discovery obligations into an undue burden justifying a stay. Defendants
may seek to compel plaintiff to comply with his discovery obligations through
the usual channels while the Court considers the pending motion for
summary judgment.

R. Doc. 72.
R. Doc. 99 at 2-3. When defendants filed their motion to stay, plaintiff
had not yet filed an opposition to defendant’s summary judgment motion.
See id. at 1. Plaintiff has since filed his opposition. R. Doc. 100.
4
R. Doc. 99 at 3.
2
2
3

For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion is DENIED.

15th
New Orleans, Louisiana, this _____ day of August, 2018.

_____________________
SARAH S. VANCE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

3