In re Auction Houses Antitrust Litigation
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
(S.D.N.Y. 2000)
In price-fixing litigation against auction houses, Christie's (defendant) produced handwritten notes from former CEO Christopher Davidge's files, and Sotheby's former chairman Alfred Taubman (plaintiff) served interrogatories seeking details about the notes' authorship and meaning; Christie's objected that the information wasn't in its control since Davidge no longer worked there and had refused to provide it, despite Davidge having signed a post-departure agreement obligating him to provide Christie's any information it might need, in exchange for a 5-million-pound payment of which 2 million remained unpaid — payment Christie's never threatened to withhold when Davidge refused to cooperate.
Whether a party has a duty to seek out the knowledge of a former employee to respond to interrogatories.