Disney and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District will head to state court this week as Judge Margaret H Schreiber hears an argument as to why Disney has filed to extend the scheduled summary judgment date by 75 days. Disney said that the District, which operates at the behest of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has delayed and withheld discovery that it needs in the case.
Judge Schreiber has set a hearing date for Disney’s motion for a continuance for this Wednesday, November 8th at 3:30pm.
The District is asking Judge Schreiber for a summary judgment and Disney has asked for discovery to construct their argument. The District had “failed to produce a single document for nearly two months” and is “dodging obligations”, according to a late October filing from Disney.
The court date for summary judgment is currently set for December 12, 2023, but Disney says they simply need more time.
In terms of a timeline of events, Disney says that it served the District with discovery on August 29, 2023. In the discovery request, Disney says that they have five interrogatories, including the identification of “affected property owners” that the District claims were not properly served information about the Agreements at issue. Disney has an additional 58 document requests that seek information such as attendees of the two public District meetings at which the Contracts were discussed; communications with the City of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista; and documents concerning the preparation, consideration, and adoption of the Contracts.
The District served responses and objections to Disney’s request on September 28th – the last day they were permitted to do so. Disney says that the District produced no documents. By September 30th, Disney asked the District to provide deposition dates for four employees whom the District used declarations from in support of their summary judgment motion.
Disney and the District met on October 3rd and agreed that documents must be produced by the District with adequate time for Disney to review them before deposing witnesses. The parties also agreed that the depositions must occur significantly before the December 12th summary judgment hearing. On an October 9th follow-up call, the District “promised to provide” a date for substantial completion of the District’s production of documents. That information was promised by October 12th. The date came and passed, and Disney says it followed up via email on October 13th and 16th. Disney says the “District remained silent”. The District has still not produced the promised information.
Disney emailed the District, noting that the timeline was already tight for a December 12th hearing if the District would’ve followed through on its promises. Disney said that with the District’s delays and silence, there is “no realistic possibility” that the timeline will work for a December 12th hearing. The District ignored that email too.
Disney says that the District finally produced 1,209 documents in an after-hours email, and just four business days before the deposition of former District Administrator John Classe. Disney quickly reviewed the metadata of the documents and determined that the 1,209 documents came from 8 custodians, none of whom had been named in the District’s summary judgment. Put differently, Disney has not received a single document from an employee that the District produced as a declarant or a single document from any of the District’s Board Members. Of the 1,209 documents produced, former Administrator Classe accounted for 848 documents amounting to more than 11,500 pages.
Disney says that all of the District’s arguments for summary judgment are fact-bound and that discovery will, once complete, demonstrate the existence of factual disputes inherent to the District’s claims. Disney says that the current hearing date deprives Disney of the time needed to compile a record in support of its opposition.
Disney says that expects pending discovery to produce evidence of facts material to each of the five counts on which the District moves for summary judgment as well as relevant evidence supportive of Disney’s affirmative defenses.
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