Saadeh v. Kagan et al

Filing 371

ORDER granting 370 Letter Motion for Discovery. Plaintiff Michael Kagan is hereby ordered to respond to the subpoena by Friday, March 14, 2025. No extensions will be granted. Failure to timely do so may result in sanctions. SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer on 3/10/2025) (tg)

SCAROLA ZUBATOV SCHAFFZIN PLLC
Alexander Zubatov

[e-mail]
[phone] ext. 1004

March 10, 2025

Honorable Paul A. Engelmayer
United States District Judge
United States District Court
Southern District of New York
40 Foley Square, Room 2201
New York, New York 10007
Re:

Saadeh v. Kagan et al., No. 20-cv-1945 (PAE)

Dear Judge Engelmayer:
We represent plaintiffRafic Saadeh in this case. We write concerning the bad-faith
conduct of Michael Kagan in his continued failure to respond to an information subpoena we
served upon him, along with a restraining notice, by certified mail, return receipt requested, on
December 11, 2024. As described below, despite Mr. Kagan's deadline to respond to the
information subpoena having been extended from late December 2024 to January 31, 2025, Mr.
Kagan failed to produce responses on that date and instead used the extra time to make a motion
to quash/stay, which this Court promptly denied. Despite that denial, Mr. Kagan has still not
produced any responses to the information subpoena and has granted himself yet more time to
respond. We ask, as further described below, that a complete response to the information
subpoena by Mr. Kagan by Friday, March 14th be ordered, at the risk of sanctions for continued
defiance of his obligations.
On December 17, 2024 (Dkt. 362) and December 19, 2024 (Dkt. 364), Mr. Kagan filed
letters with the Court to ask for an extension until January 31, 2025 to respond to plaintiffs
information subpoena. In asking for that extension, Mr. Kagan represented that the extra time
would allow him to gather the responsive information the subpoena required:
I am writing to respectfully request an extension until January 31, 2025, to return the
questionnaire in connection with the subpoena issued by Mr. Saadeh ....
The timing of this subpoena also coincides with the holiday season, which presents
practical challenges in gathering the necessary information. These include limited access
to records, potential delays in coordinating with involved parties, and personal
obligations during this period.
For these reasons, I respectfully request that the Court grant an extension until January
31, 2025, to allow sufficient time to respond thoroughly and accurately to the subpoena.
620 5TH AVENUE, 2ND FLOOR NEW YORK NY 10020
TEL [phone] FAX [phone] WWW.SZSLAW.COM

SCAROLA ZUBATOV SCHAFFZIN PLLC
Dkt. 364 ( emphases added). Plaintiff did not object to the requested extension for the purpose
Mr. Kagan stated, viz., to gather information and respond, see Dkt. 365, and the Court granted
Mr. Kagan's request. See Dkt. 364.
As it turned out, however, instead of using the extra time to respond to the information
subpoena, as he represented he would, Mr. Kagan instead duplicitously used the extra time he
was given to draft and file, on the subpoena response extended date due of January 31, 2025, a
38-page, single-spaced letter motion to quash the subpoena and/or stay enforcement. See Dkt.
367. On February 3, 2025, the Court promptly issued an order denying that motion. See Dkt.
369.
Despite this denial of his request for a stay or to quash the subpoena, Mr. Kagan
nonetheless proceeded to grant himself a de facto stay. Plaintiff, expecting a response to the
information subpoena from Mr. Kagan in short order, received nothing. Having waited a full
month with no communication whatsoever from Mr. Kagan, I then emailed Mr. Kagan on March
4 th to inquire about the status of his response and ask that it be produced immediately. (The
email correspondence between myself and Mr. Kagan on this subject and as further described
below is attached as Exhibit A hereto.)
Mr. Kagan's disingenuous response, emailed two days later on March 6th , claimed that he
was "reasonably await[ing] further instruction" from the Court after the Court's denial of his
motion to stay because "[t]he court denied my stay request after the original due date, and no
new deadline was set." See Ex. A. He proposed to furnish a response by April 4th, an effective
grant of yet another month-long extension. See id. As I pointed out in my response to Mr.
Kagan the next day, his was in no wise a remotely reasonable construction of anything, with the
January 31 st deadline having passed only because Mr. Kagan himself chose to use the original
extension he had been granted to draft his motion papers rather than to prepare a response to the
information subpoena, and of course, with that motion having been denied, a response to the
information subpoena was past due. See id. Nonetheless, in an effort to be courteous and avoid
troubling the Court with this issue, I explained that we would consent to give Mr. Kagan another
week from the date of my email, viz., until March 14th, to produce a response. See id.
Mr. Kagan today-three days later- wrote to reject plaintiffs offer to accept his longuntimely responses by March 14th and to say he will "aim to provide them by March 28 th ," Id.
(emphasis added).
This is, needless to say, unacceptable and continues the same pattern of dilatory and
vexatious conduct that has characterized Mr. Kagan's actions both in the underlying litigation (in
which, as the Court will recall, he continued repeatedly delaying in repayment of plaintiffs loan
until after Mr. Kagan's father had died, whereupon Mr. Kagan immediately ceased
communicating with plaintiff) and as concerns this information subpoena.

SCAROLA ZUBATOV SCHAFFZIN PLLC
For these reasons, we ask that the Court order Mr. Kagan to produce complete and
thorough responses to the information subpoena by March 14th or incur sanctions for his failure
to do so.
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Alexander Zubatov
Alexander Zubatov

ByECF

Plaintiff Michael Kagan is hereby ordered to respond to the
subpoena by Friday, March 14, 2025. No extensions will be
granted. Failure to timely do so may result in sanctions.
SO ORDERED.
PAUL A. ENGELMAYER
United States District Judge
Date: March I 0, 2025