Benanav v. Healthy Paws Pet Insurance LLC

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE STEVEN BENANAV, et al., CASE NO. 2:20-cv-00421-LK Plaintiffs, ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR 12 v. RECONSIDERATION 13 HEALTHY PAWS PET INSURANCE LLC, Defendant.

This matter comes before the Court on Plaintiffs’ Motion for Reconsideration of the Court’s Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for Sanctions. Dkt. Nos. 238, 245.

Motions for reconsideration are disfavored under the local rules, and the Court “will ordinarily deny such motions in the absence of a showing of manifest error in the prior ruling or a showing of new facts or legal authority which could not have been brought to its attention earlier with reasonable diligence.” LCR 7(h)(1); see also Kona Enters., Inc. v. Est. of Bishop, 229 F.3d 22 877, 890 (9th Cir. 2000) (noting that reconsideration is an “extraordinary remedy, to be used sparingly in the interests of finality and conservation of judicial resources” (cleaned up)); Santiago v. Gage, No. 3:18-CV-05825-RBL, 2020 WL 42246, at *1 (W.D. Wash. Jan. 3, 2020) (“Mere disagreement with a previous order is an insufficient basis for reconsideration[.]”). Furthermore, movants are required to “point out with specificity the matters which the movant believes were overlooked or misapprehended by the court, any new matters being brought to the court’s attention for the first time, and the particular modifications being sought in the court’s prior ruling.” LCR 7(h)(2).

7 Plaintiffs contend that the Court erred by “requiring detailed expert analysis in verified Rule 33 interrogatory answers by lay consumers.” Dkt. No. 245 at 2. However, the Order never indicated that Plaintiffs were required to provide detailed expert analysis in their discovery responses. Plaintiffs also insist that their failure to provide complete discovery responses before October 2023 was justified because they objected to the interrogatories, there was a “merits dispute about what [wa]s relevant,” and the “landscape shifted” only when the Court instructed them in its order regarding Mr. Gage’s dismissal that they could not unilaterally decide what information was relevant. Id. at 4 n.3, 5. But the latest time Plaintiffs could have raised a relevance objection was in response to Healthy Paws’ motion to compel. Once the Court ordered Plaintiffs to respond to the interrogatories, they were required to do so regardless of their objections or opinions about relevance. 8B Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Fed. Prac. and Proc. § 2289 (3d ed. Dec. 2023) (“The propriety of the discovery sought is not in issue at the time sanctions are being imposed under Rule 37(b). That question will have been decided when the court ordered the discovery.”).

21 Accordingly, the Court DENIES Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration. Dkt. No. 245.

22 Dated this 16th day of January, 2024.

A Lauren King 24 United States District Judge