Preview
DOCKET NO. FST-CV21-6049964-S : SUPERIOR COURT
:
JOHN MALIK : JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF STAMFORD-
: NORWALK AT STAMFORD
v. :
:
DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE :
INVESTORS GP LLC, DECCAN VALUE :
INVESTORS L.P. and VINIT M. BODAS :
DOCKET NO. FST-CV21-6052725-S SUPERIOR COURT
:
DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE : JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF STAMFORD-
INVESTORS GP LLC, and DECCAN VALUE : NORWALK AT STAMFORD
INVESTORS L.P. :
:
v. :
:
JOHN MALIK :
:
v. :
:
VINIT M. BODAS : APRIL 9, 2024
OBJECTION TO MOTION TO COMPEL REGARDING EXPERT WITNESSES
Deccan Value LLC, Deccan Value Investors GP LLC, Deccan Value Investors L.P., and
Vinit M. Bodas (collectively, “Deccan”) hereby object to John Malik’s April 3, 2024 motion to
compel depositions of expert witnesses and extend his deadline to disclose expert witnesses
(Malik v. Deccan, No. 410; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466).
I. Preliminary Statement
John Malik has ignored yet another deadline in this case, and he has not even argued that
there is any good cause for his delinquency. Instead, Malik references irrelevant events and casts
false aspersions on Deccan’s counsel. Throughout this litigation, Malik has requested and
received dozens of extensions of time and has had more than ample time to conduct discovery.
Yet now, with trial less than three months away, he claims that he should be excused from
complying with the expert discovery deadline that he himself proposed and with which he failed
to comply for no good cause.
On January 3, 2024, the Court granted Malik’s unilaterally requested modification of the
Scheduling Order, extending by six months his deadline to depose the expert witnesses whom
Deccan had disclosed long ago. Yet Malik ignored that deadline too, making no effort to depose
any of Deccan’s experts until more than a month after the extended deadline that he requested
had expired, and making no effort to disclose any expert witnesses of his own before that
deadline either. Malik has had enough chances. His belated motion to extend the expert witness
deadlines yet again, which he does not even attempt to support with good cause, should be
denied.
II. Background
Malik commenced this litigation more than three years ago, on January 8, 2021. After
expert witness deadlines already had been extended in a previous revision to the Scheduling
Order, in May 2023 the parties filed, and the Court approved, another revised Scheduling Order.
Malik v. Deccan, No. 271; Deccan v. Malik, No. 272. That revised Scheduling Order required
Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses to be disclosed by June 15, 2023 and deposed by July 21, 2023, and it
required Defendants’ expert witnesses to be disclosed by July 29, 2023 and deposed by August
18, 2023. Id. Malik ignored those deadlines, disclosing no expert witnesses and making no effort
to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses on time.
Long after those expert witness deadlines had passed, on January 2, 2024, with no input
from Deccan, Malik unilaterally moved to continue the trial and to set new deadlines for other
aspects of the case, including expert witnesses. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379; Deccan v. Malik, No.
419. Malik requested the following deadlines:
-2-
Any experts previously disclosed shall be deposed, if at all, on or before February 16,
2024, subject to those experts being made available for their depositions. Any new
experts or rebuttal experts in relation to any previously disclosed experts shall be
disclosed by March 8, 2024 . . . .
Id. The Court granted Malik’s motion. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No.
419.02.
Malik misrepresents the facts. The expert deposition deadline that Malik himself
requested was February 16, 2024. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419. Malik
requested that deadline, and the Court granted his motion with no input from Deccan. Malik v.
Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. Contrary to Malik’s false statement, the
parties most certainly are not “permitted to generally conduct fact and expert witness depositions
as late as May 18, 2024 in the present Scheduling Order.” Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 2. If they
were, the instant motion would not have been necessary. While the Scheduling Order permitted
Malik to disclose additional expert witnesses by March 8, 2024 and any such experts to be
deposed by May 18, 2024, Malik did not disclose any experts. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02;
Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. The only party to have disclosed any experts is Deccan, and Malik
was required to depose them no later than February 16, 2024. Id. That fact is not in dispute.
Separately, on December 11, 2023, the Court ordered that Malik could conduct a remote
deposition of one of Deccan’s expert witnesses, John Paul Osborn, of two hours or less. Malik v.
Deccan, No. 303.01; Deccan v. Malik, No. 319.01. Deccan’s counsel promptly checked with Mr.
Osborn about his availability and e-mailed Malik’s counsel on December 22, 2023 that he was
available for a remote deposition on January 16 or 22. E-mail from D. Schwartz to J. Nealon et
al. dated 12/22/23 (attached as Ex. A). Malik’s counsel replied the same day that he would
“chew on this,” then never addressed the issue again. Id. Despite having moved to compel Mr.
Osborn’s deposition, and despite Deccan’s counsel’s offering available dates to complete it,
-3-
Malik made no effort to depose Mr. Osborn before the February 16, 2024 deadline that Malik
himself had requested.
Malik’s requested February 16, 2024 deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses came
and went with no action on Malik’s part to depose any of the expert witnesses Deccan had
disclosed long before. Malik did not notice any depositions of any of Deccan’s expert witnesses,
he did not inquire about potential dates for any such depositions, and he did not move to extend
the deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses. Instead, Malik simply ignored the deadline.
Malik’s requested March 8, 2024 deadline to disclose new expert witnesses also came
and went with no action on Malik’s part to comply with it. Malik did not disclose any expert
witnesses, and he did not move to extend his deadline to do so. Instead, he simply ignored it.
Having ignored the extended deadlines that he had requested, on March 19, 2024,
Malik’s counsel e-mailed notices of depositions of four expert witnesses for the following week,
March 26, 27, and 28. E-mail from J. Nealon to D. Schwartz et al. dated 3/19/24 (attached as Ex.
B). By that point, Malik’s extended deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses had expired
more than a month earlier, on February 16. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No.
419.02. Two weeks later, on April 3, 2024, Malik moved to compel the late depositions and to
extend his own deadline to disclose expert witnesses yet again.
III. Argument
Malik has no good cause to extend yet again his time to depose Deccan’s expert
witnesses or to disclose any expert witnesses of his own. Indeed, having completely ignored the
extended deadlines that he alone had requested, Malik hasn’t even argued that he has good cause,
and he has cited no legal authority whatsoever. Instead, in a shameless attempt to distract from
his own serial negligence, Malik casts false aspersions on Deccan’s counsel.
-4-
Utterly shameless, Malik claims to have been misled by Deccan’s counsel about the
expert witness deadlines. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 1-2; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466 at 1-2. That
is categorically false. Deccan’s counsel never suggested to Malik in any way that Deccan wanted
to extend any expert witness deadlines. Malik even admits that, apart from the trial date,
“Attorney Schwartz stated that Deccan was ‘not requesting any other changes to the [presently in
effect] Scheduling Order.’” Id. at 3. Malik also admits that that communication was January 5,
2024, more than a month before the deadline that he seeks to retroactively extend. Id. Malik also
admits that, when he proposed extending expert discovery deadlines, Deccan’s counsel
immediately responded that they did not agree to do so. Id. at 5. As Malik well knows, Deccan’s
counsel never suggested in any way that it was seeking to extend the expert witness deadlines.
Malik was not misled. He has no excuse for blatantly ignoring his own hand-picked deadlines.
For reasons that he does not explain, Malik repeatedly harps on Deccan’s counsel’s long-
planned vacation in early July. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466. It is not
clear what that has to do with Malik’s motion. While counsel’s July vacation plans conflict with
the trial date, they do not conflict with or have any relevance to the expert witness deadlines.
Again, Deccan’s counsel never suggested to Malik in any way that Deccan wanted to extend any
expert witness deadlines.
In addition to failing to show any good cause for his belated attempt to extend the expert
witness deadlines, Malik has not offered any explanation for his failure to file such a motion
before the deadlines expired. Indeed, Malik waited until more than a month past the deadline to
make any effort to depose Deccan’s experts or retroactively extend the deadline. Malik clearly
knows how to file a motion for extension of time, as he has filed dozens of them in this litigation,
including eight alone for his response to Deccan’s motion for summary judgment. Yet Malik
-5-
never moved to extend the expert witness deadlines that he himself had requested until long after
they had expired.
Granting Malik’s belated motion would prejudice Deccan. Trial is scheduled for June 25,
2024, and Malik confirms that he does not intend to seek a continuance of that date. Deccan
needs to spend the short time that is left preparing for trial, not attempting to schedule, prepare
for and participate in multiple expert witness depositions that were required to have been
conducted months ago. At this late date, there is no time to depose four expert witnesses, which
presumably is why Malik requested a February 16, 2024 deadline to complete such depositions.
Expert witnesses are busy, and Deccan does not control their schedules. If the Court were to
grant Malik’s motion, it would impose an undue hardship on Deccan and the witnesses to try to
schedule and complete their depositions in the brief period remaining before trial.
In addition to requesting 30 days to depose the four expert witnesses whom Deccan
disclosed long ago, Malik also requests permission to disclose his own expert witnesses for the
first time within 10 days after he finally gets around to deposing Deccan’s experts. If Malik were
permitted to do so, Deccan would not even learn of Malik’s experts’ identities until the eve of
trial, before factoring in any time that Deccan may need to depose Malik’s unknown experts.
That prejudice alone warrants denying Malik’s motion. See Wynne v. Summerland, Inc., No.
LLICV095006358S, 2012 WL 4901698, at *2 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 24, 2012) (denying
motion for permission to make late disclosure of expert witness).
Malik complains that he would have a hard time examining Deccan’s experts at trial
without having deposed them first, but that is entirely his own fault. Malik could have deposed
Deccan’s experts in the summer of 2023 before the deadline expired, but he chose not to.
Instead, as Malik admits, he attempted to notice expert depositions in September 2023, long after
-6-
the deadline had passed. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 3; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466 at 3. When the
Court subsequently granted Malik’s motion to postpone the trial and extend the expert deposition
deadline to February 16, 2024, Malik could have deposed Deccan’s experts before then, but he
chose not to do that either. Malik is not being “precluded” from deposing Deccan’s experts or
disclosing his own experts as he suggests; he simply chose not to do so despite multiple
opportunities. Id. at 7. Having ignored the extended deadlines to depose and disclose expert
witnesses that he requested, Malik should not be heard to complain that his own serial negligence
puts him in a difficult spot.
IV. Conclusion
Wherefore, Deccan respectfully requests that the Court deny John Malik’s motion to
compel depositions of expert witnesses and extend his deadline to disclose expert witnesses.
DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE
INVESTORS GP LLC, DECCAN VALUE
INVESTORS L.P., and VINIT M. BODAS
By: /s/ Daniel L. Schwartz
Daniel L. Schwartz
Howard Fetner
Day Pitney LLP
One Stamford Plaza, 7th Floor
263 Tresser Boulevard
Stamford, CT 06901
T: (203) 977-7300
F: (203) 399-5899
dlschwartz@daypitney.com
hfetner@daypitney.com
Juris No. 014230
-7-
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that a copy of the above was or will immediately be mailed or delivered
electronically or non-electronically on April 9, 2024 to all counsel and self-represented parties of
record and that written consent for electronic delivery was received from all counsel and self-
represented parties of record who were or will immediately be electronically served.
James Nealon
james.nealon@nealon-law.com
Mark J. Kovack
kovack@urbanthier.com
/s/ Daniel L. Schwartz
-8-
EXHIBIT A
Fetner, Howard
From: James Nealon
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2023 3:50 PM
To: Schwartz, Dan; 'Kovack@urbanthier.com'
Cc: Fetner, Howard
Subject: RE: Deposition and Hearing Dates
CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL
DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Dan: Appreciate the scheduling update; let me chew on this as part of the bigger scheduling picture and we can discuss
on our planned call next week – does that work? Best - Jim
From: Schwartz, Dan
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2023 3:31 PM
To: James Nealon ; 'Kovack@urbanthier.com'
Cc: Fetner, Howard
Subject: Deposition and Hearing Dates
Mr. Bodas is out of the country until January 15th. If you expect him to testify at the hearing on your motion for
sanctions, we will need to schedule that hearing for after January 15th.
With respect to the deposition of Mr. Osborn, he currently could be available for a remote deposition on January 16 or
22.
Daniel L. (Dan) Schwartz | Attorney at Law | Attorney Bio
One Stamford Plaza, 7th Floor | 263 Tresser Boulevard | Stamford CT 06901
t (203) 977 7536 | f (203) 399 5899 | m (203) 517 7168
dlschwartz@daypitney.com | www.daypitney.com
BOSTON | CONNECTICUT | FLORIDA | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK | PROVIDENCE | WASHINGTON,
DC
This message contains PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION intended solely for the use of the
addressee(s) named above. Any disclosure, distribution, copying or use of the information by others is strictly prohibited. If
you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by immediate reply and delete the original message.
Thank you.
**********************************************************************************************************
1
EXHIBIT B
Fetner, Howard
From: James Nealon
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 9:44 AM
To: Schwartz, Dan; Fetner, Howard
Cc: 'barrow@fdh.com'
Subject: Expert Renotices
Attachments: Ken Joseph Notice 3 19 X.pdf; Kenneth Pia Notice 3 19 X.pdf; John Osborn Notice 3 19
X.pdf; Steve Shapiro Notice 3 19 X.pdf
CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL
DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
Gentlemen:
Please see attached. Of course, will work with you all on the dates. All set as remote depositions.
Jim
James Nealon, Esq.
Nealon Law LLC
1266 E. Main Street, Suite 700R
Stamford, Connecticut 06902
Ph: (203) 635-7067 Ext. 803
Fax: (203) 698-5031
Email: james.nealon@nealon-law.com
1
Preview
DOCKET NO. FST-CV21-6049964-S : SUPERIOR COURT : JOHN MALIK : JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF STAMFORD- : NORWALK AT STAMFORD v. : : DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE : INVESTORS GP LLC, DECCAN VALUE : INVESTORS L.P. and VINIT M. BODAS : DOCKET NO. FST-CV21-6052725-S SUPERIOR COURT : DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE : JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF STAMFORD- INVESTORS GP LLC, and DECCAN VALUE : NORWALK AT STAMFORD INVESTORS L.P. : : v. : : JOHN MALIK : : v. : : VINIT M. BODAS : APRIL 9, 2024 OBJECTION TO MOTION TO COMPEL REGARDING EXPERT WITNESSES Deccan Value LLC, Deccan Value Investors GP LLC, Deccan Value Investors L.P., and Vinit M. Bodas (collectively, “Deccan”) hereby object to John Malik’s April 3, 2024 motion to compel depositions of expert witnesses and extend his deadline to disclose expert witnesses (Malik v. Deccan, No. 410; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466). I. Preliminary Statement John Malik has ignored yet another deadline in this case, and he has not even argued that there is any good cause for his delinquency. Instead, Malik references irrelevant events and casts false aspersions on Deccan’s counsel. Throughout this litigation, Malik has requested and received dozens of extensions of time and has had more than ample time to conduct discovery. Yet now, with trial less than three months away, he claims that he should be excused from complying with the expert discovery deadline that he himself proposed and with which he failed to comply for no good cause. On January 3, 2024, the Court granted Malik’s unilaterally requested modification of the Scheduling Order, extending by six months his deadline to depose the expert witnesses whom Deccan had disclosed long ago. Yet Malik ignored that deadline too, making no effort to depose any of Deccan’s experts until more than a month after the extended deadline that he requested had expired, and making no effort to disclose any expert witnesses of his own before that deadline either. Malik has had enough chances. His belated motion to extend the expert witness deadlines yet again, which he does not even attempt to support with good cause, should be denied. II. Background Malik commenced this litigation more than three years ago, on January 8, 2021. After expert witness deadlines already had been extended in a previous revision to the Scheduling Order, in May 2023 the parties filed, and the Court approved, another revised Scheduling Order. Malik v. Deccan, No. 271; Deccan v. Malik, No. 272. That revised Scheduling Order required Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses to be disclosed by June 15, 2023 and deposed by July 21, 2023, and it required Defendants’ expert witnesses to be disclosed by July 29, 2023 and deposed by August 18, 2023. Id. Malik ignored those deadlines, disclosing no expert witnesses and making no effort to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses on time. Long after those expert witness deadlines had passed, on January 2, 2024, with no input from Deccan, Malik unilaterally moved to continue the trial and to set new deadlines for other aspects of the case, including expert witnesses. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419. Malik requested the following deadlines: -2- Any experts previously disclosed shall be deposed, if at all, on or before February 16, 2024, subject to those experts being made available for their depositions. Any new experts or rebuttal experts in relation to any previously disclosed experts shall be disclosed by March 8, 2024 . . . . Id. The Court granted Malik’s motion. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. Malik misrepresents the facts. The expert deposition deadline that Malik himself requested was February 16, 2024. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419. Malik requested that deadline, and the Court granted his motion with no input from Deccan. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. Contrary to Malik’s false statement, the parties most certainly are not “permitted to generally conduct fact and expert witness depositions as late as May 18, 2024 in the present Scheduling Order.” Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 2. If they were, the instant motion would not have been necessary. While the Scheduling Order permitted Malik to disclose additional expert witnesses by March 8, 2024 and any such experts to be deposed by May 18, 2024, Malik did not disclose any experts. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. The only party to have disclosed any experts is Deccan, and Malik was required to depose them no later than February 16, 2024. Id. That fact is not in dispute. Separately, on December 11, 2023, the Court ordered that Malik could conduct a remote deposition of one of Deccan’s expert witnesses, John Paul Osborn, of two hours or less. Malik v. Deccan, No. 303.01; Deccan v. Malik, No. 319.01. Deccan’s counsel promptly checked with Mr. Osborn about his availability and e-mailed Malik’s counsel on December 22, 2023 that he was available for a remote deposition on January 16 or 22. E-mail from D. Schwartz to J. Nealon et al. dated 12/22/23 (attached as Ex. A). Malik’s counsel replied the same day that he would “chew on this,” then never addressed the issue again. Id. Despite having moved to compel Mr. Osborn’s deposition, and despite Deccan’s counsel’s offering available dates to complete it, -3- Malik made no effort to depose Mr. Osborn before the February 16, 2024 deadline that Malik himself had requested. Malik’s requested February 16, 2024 deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses came and went with no action on Malik’s part to depose any of the expert witnesses Deccan had disclosed long before. Malik did not notice any depositions of any of Deccan’s expert witnesses, he did not inquire about potential dates for any such depositions, and he did not move to extend the deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses. Instead, Malik simply ignored the deadline. Malik’s requested March 8, 2024 deadline to disclose new expert witnesses also came and went with no action on Malik’s part to comply with it. Malik did not disclose any expert witnesses, and he did not move to extend his deadline to do so. Instead, he simply ignored it. Having ignored the extended deadlines that he had requested, on March 19, 2024, Malik’s counsel e-mailed notices of depositions of four expert witnesses for the following week, March 26, 27, and 28. E-mail from J. Nealon to D. Schwartz et al. dated 3/19/24 (attached as Ex. B). By that point, Malik’s extended deadline to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses had expired more than a month earlier, on February 16. Malik v. Deccan, No. 379.02; Deccan v. Malik, No. 419.02. Two weeks later, on April 3, 2024, Malik moved to compel the late depositions and to extend his own deadline to disclose expert witnesses yet again. III. Argument Malik has no good cause to extend yet again his time to depose Deccan’s expert witnesses or to disclose any expert witnesses of his own. Indeed, having completely ignored the extended deadlines that he alone had requested, Malik hasn’t even argued that he has good cause, and he has cited no legal authority whatsoever. Instead, in a shameless attempt to distract from his own serial negligence, Malik casts false aspersions on Deccan’s counsel. -4- Utterly shameless, Malik claims to have been misled by Deccan’s counsel about the expert witness deadlines. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 1-2; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466 at 1-2. That is categorically false. Deccan’s counsel never suggested to Malik in any way that Deccan wanted to extend any expert witness deadlines. Malik even admits that, apart from the trial date, “Attorney Schwartz stated that Deccan was ‘not requesting any other changes to the [presently in effect] Scheduling Order.’” Id. at 3. Malik also admits that that communication was January 5, 2024, more than a month before the deadline that he seeks to retroactively extend. Id. Malik also admits that, when he proposed extending expert discovery deadlines, Deccan’s counsel immediately responded that they did not agree to do so. Id. at 5. As Malik well knows, Deccan’s counsel never suggested in any way that it was seeking to extend the expert witness deadlines. Malik was not misled. He has no excuse for blatantly ignoring his own hand-picked deadlines. For reasons that he does not explain, Malik repeatedly harps on Deccan’s counsel’s long- planned vacation in early July. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466. It is not clear what that has to do with Malik’s motion. While counsel’s July vacation plans conflict with the trial date, they do not conflict with or have any relevance to the expert witness deadlines. Again, Deccan’s counsel never suggested to Malik in any way that Deccan wanted to extend any expert witness deadlines. In addition to failing to show any good cause for his belated attempt to extend the expert witness deadlines, Malik has not offered any explanation for his failure to file such a motion before the deadlines expired. Indeed, Malik waited until more than a month past the deadline to make any effort to depose Deccan’s experts or retroactively extend the deadline. Malik clearly knows how to file a motion for extension of time, as he has filed dozens of them in this litigation, including eight alone for his response to Deccan’s motion for summary judgment. Yet Malik -5- never moved to extend the expert witness deadlines that he himself had requested until long after they had expired. Granting Malik’s belated motion would prejudice Deccan. Trial is scheduled for June 25, 2024, and Malik confirms that he does not intend to seek a continuance of that date. Deccan needs to spend the short time that is left preparing for trial, not attempting to schedule, prepare for and participate in multiple expert witness depositions that were required to have been conducted months ago. At this late date, there is no time to depose four expert witnesses, which presumably is why Malik requested a February 16, 2024 deadline to complete such depositions. Expert witnesses are busy, and Deccan does not control their schedules. If the Court were to grant Malik’s motion, it would impose an undue hardship on Deccan and the witnesses to try to schedule and complete their depositions in the brief period remaining before trial. In addition to requesting 30 days to depose the four expert witnesses whom Deccan disclosed long ago, Malik also requests permission to disclose his own expert witnesses for the first time within 10 days after he finally gets around to deposing Deccan’s experts. If Malik were permitted to do so, Deccan would not even learn of Malik’s experts’ identities until the eve of trial, before factoring in any time that Deccan may need to depose Malik’s unknown experts. That prejudice alone warrants denying Malik’s motion. See Wynne v. Summerland, Inc., No. LLICV095006358S, 2012 WL 4901698, at *2 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 24, 2012) (denying motion for permission to make late disclosure of expert witness). Malik complains that he would have a hard time examining Deccan’s experts at trial without having deposed them first, but that is entirely his own fault. Malik could have deposed Deccan’s experts in the summer of 2023 before the deadline expired, but he chose not to. Instead, as Malik admits, he attempted to notice expert depositions in September 2023, long after -6- the deadline had passed. Malik v. Deccan, No. 410 at 3; Deccan v. Malik, No. 466 at 3. When the Court subsequently granted Malik’s motion to postpone the trial and extend the expert deposition deadline to February 16, 2024, Malik could have deposed Deccan’s experts before then, but he chose not to do that either. Malik is not being “precluded” from deposing Deccan’s experts or disclosing his own experts as he suggests; he simply chose not to do so despite multiple opportunities. Id. at 7. Having ignored the extended deadlines to depose and disclose expert witnesses that he requested, Malik should not be heard to complain that his own serial negligence puts him in a difficult spot. IV. Conclusion Wherefore, Deccan respectfully requests that the Court deny John Malik’s motion to compel depositions of expert witnesses and extend his deadline to disclose expert witnesses. DECCAN VALUE LLC, DECCAN VALUE INVESTORS GP LLC, DECCAN VALUE INVESTORS L.P., and VINIT M. BODAS By: /s/ Daniel L. Schwartz Daniel L. Schwartz Howard Fetner Day Pitney LLP One Stamford Plaza, 7th Floor 263 Tresser Boulevard Stamford, CT 06901 T: (203) 977-7300 F: (203) 399-5899 dlschwartz@daypitney.com hfetner@daypitney.com Juris No. 014230 -7- CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that a copy of the above was or will immediately be mailed or delivered electronically or non-electronically on April 9, 2024 to all counsel and self-represented parties of record and that written consent for electronic delivery was received from all counsel and self- represented parties of record who were or will immediately be electronically served. James Nealon james.nealon@nealon-law.com Mark J. Kovack kovack@urbanthier.com /s/ Daniel L. Schwartz -8- EXHIBIT A Fetner, Howard From: James Nealon Sent: Friday, December 22, 2023 3:50 PM To: Schwartz, Dan; 'Kovack@urbanthier.com' Cc: Fetner, Howard Subject: RE: Deposition and Hearing Dates CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dan: Appreciate the scheduling update; let me chew on this as part of the bigger scheduling picture and we can discuss on our planned call next week – does that work? Best - Jim From: Schwartz, Dan Sent: Friday, December 22, 2023 3:31 PM To: James Nealon ; 'Kovack@urbanthier.com' Cc: Fetner, Howard Subject: Deposition and Hearing Dates Mr. Bodas is out of the country until January 15th. If you expect him to testify at the hearing on your motion for sanctions, we will need to schedule that hearing for after January 15th. With respect to the deposition of Mr. Osborn, he currently could be available for a remote deposition on January 16 or 22. Daniel L. (Dan) Schwartz | Attorney at Law | Attorney Bio One Stamford Plaza, 7th Floor | 263 Tresser Boulevard | Stamford CT 06901 t (203) 977 7536 | f (203) 399 5899 | m (203) 517 7168 dlschwartz@daypitney.com | www.daypitney.com BOSTON | CONNECTICUT | FLORIDA | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK | PROVIDENCE | WASHINGTON, DC This message contains PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above. Any disclosure, distribution, copying or use of the information by others is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender by immediate reply and delete the original message. Thank you. ********************************************************************************************************** 1 EXHIBIT B Fetner, Howard From: James Nealon Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 9:44 AM To: Schwartz, Dan; Fetner, Howard Cc: 'barrow@fdh.com' Subject: Expert Renotices Attachments: Ken Joseph Notice 3 19 X.pdf; Kenneth Pia Notice 3 19 X.pdf; John Osborn Notice 3 19 X.pdf; Steve Shapiro Notice 3 19 X.pdf CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL DO NOT click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Gentlemen: Please see attached. Of course, will work with you all on the dates. All set as remote depositions. Jim James Nealon, Esq. Nealon Law LLC 1266 E. Main Street, Suite 700R Stamford, Connecticut 06902 Ph: (203) 635-7067 Ext. 803 Fax: (203) 698-5031 Email: james.nealon@nealon-law.com 1