A federal magistrate has agreed to give The Villages more time to produce a scaled-down list of emails in the case of ex-sales representatives now competing against their former boss.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Philip Lamens on Tuesday ruled that Properties of The Villages now has until Dec. 11 to turn over thousands of email messages sought by former top producers Christopher Day and Jason Kranz of NextHome KD Premier Realty.
“Although Properties of The Villages did not notify Defendants of the issues with the number of documents to be produced until three days before the discovery deadline, there still exists good cause to narrow the discovery request to emails post-dating January 1, 2017 found using agreed upon search terms. The court agrees with POV that the burden and expense of reviewing 178,388 emails outweighs the needs of the case,” Lamens wrote in the order granting a motion from Properties of The Villages.
Properties of The Villages estimated that at a pace of one document per minute, the review of the emails would require 3,000 man-hours to complete.
Properties of The Villages said it hopes to reduce the number of email to 7,582 by limiting the number of “email hits” to a list of search terms it has proposed. The search terms include the names of Jennifer Parr, Bobby Gulati and Mike Berning, “three high-level individuals associated with Properties of The Villages who had contact with Defendants.”
The former sales representatives are fighting for back pay they claim they are owed by The Villages. All have given detailed depositions describing uncompensated overtime, mandatory trolley rides, mandatory sales meetings and even being treated like Uber drivers and skycaps for would-be homebuyers arriving on the Lifestyle Preview Plan.
Day has estimated he is owed $1.47 million in back wages, according to a deposition he gave earlier this year. However, he and the others have argued in court that they cannot properly calculate what they are owed without access to information from Properties of The Villages.
