Rincon v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation ( 2019 )

1 2 3 4 5 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 6 WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT TACOMA 7 DIANA RINCON, CASE NO. C18-5415 BHS 8 Plaintiff, ORDER DENYING MOTION TO 9 v. QUASH 10 NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION, 11 Defendant. 12 13 This matter comes before the Court on Defendant National Railroad Passenger 14 Corporation d/b/a Amtrak’s (“Amtrak”) motion to quash videotape deposition subpoena 15 of Shane Tuffy. Dkt. 44. 16 On November 26, 2019, Amtrak filed the instant motion requesting that the Court 17 quash a subpoena to depose Amtrak’s Director of Operating Practices, Shane Tuffy. Id. 18 On December 4, 2019, Plaintiff Karen and Kevin Barrett and Diana Rincon (“Plaintiffs”) 19 responded. Dkt. 46. On December 6, 2019, Amtrak replied. Dkt. 49. 20 Amtrak argues that “Plaintiffs’ attempt to re-depose Mr. Tuffy is cumulative, 21 duplicative, burdensome, and would serve no legitimate purpose.” Dkt. 44 at 4. The 22 1 Court disagrees. First, Mr. Tuffy has not been deposed in this case and therefore a 2 deposition would not be duplicative. 3 Second, there appears to be a valid dispute regarding Mr. Tuffy’s testimony in a 4 previous case. Amtrak’s position is that Mr. Tuffy was unaware of the new route such 5 that he did nothing to ensure that the route plan complied with federal law. Plaintiffs’ 6 contend that Mr. Tuffy was sent an email that identified the location in question such that 7 he could have been aware of the failure to include that location in the trip plan. Plaintiffs 8 assert that they discovered this email after Mr. Tuffy’s previous deposition in the other 9 case. The Court concludes that this is a legitimate dispute and should be resolved in 10 favor of allowing the additional discovery to, at the very least, fully develop the record. 11 Thus, the deposition will not be cumulative. 12 Third, the deposition will not be burdensome now that the related case that was set 13 for trial settled. Thus, Amtrak should have counsel available to attend the deposition. 14 Finally, Mr. Tuffy’s testimony could conceivably alter the balance of factors on 15 the choice of law issue. Amtrak persuaded the Court that its Washington employees in 16 charge of developing and identifying locations with speed restrictions were negligent in 17 failing to notify its Delaware office of the relevant location, MP 19.8. If, however, 18 Plaintiffs can establish that the local office sent information to Delaware identifying MP 19 19.8 as a location that should be included in the published trip plan, then it would seem 20 that the Washington employee(s) in charge of planning and information gathering would 21 not be negligent such that their actions may not have caused the injuries. Thus, those 22 contacts would be irrelevant to any choice of law analysis. Then, it could be possible that 1 the only relevant contacts would be the engineer and conductor in Washington balanced 2 against Delaware office’s failure to properly incorporate MP 19.8 in the published trip 3 plan. While this may be insufficient to overcome the presumption in favor of applying 4 Washington law, Zenaida-Garcia v. Recovery Sys. Tech., Inc., 128 Wn. App. 256, 261– 5 62 (2005), Plaintiffs are entitled to an analysis of the issue based on all the facts. 6 Therefore, the Court DENIES Amtrak’s motion to quash the subpoena. 7 IT IS SO ORDERED. 8 Dated this 10th day of December, 2019. A 9 10 BENJAMIN H. SETTLE 11 United States District Judge 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22