Julita De Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, SBP Management, LLC and Yuri Gaspard

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS DIVISION OF ST. THOMAS AND ST. JOHN ******* JULITA DE LEON, ) CASE NO. ST-2021-CV-00001 ) Plaintiff, ) ACTION FOR DAMAGES ) v. ) JURY TRIAL DEMANDED ) SBP ROYAL DANE MALL, LLC, SBP ) MANAGEMENT, LLC, and YURI ) GASPARD, ) ) Defendants. ) ) MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER THIS MATTER is before the Court on Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Defendant SBP Management, LLC to Supplement its Responses to Plaintiff’s Written Discovery submitted on June 25, 2025, Defendant’s Opposition of SBP Management, LLC (‘SBPM’) to Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Supplementation of Discovery submitted on July 8, 2025, and Plaintiff’s Reply to Defendant’s Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel submitted on July 21, 2025. BACKGROUND This cause of action arose out of a fire that occurred on July 4, 2019. Defendant SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC owned commercial real property located at 26A, 27B, 28A Dronningens Gade, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, a location known as Royal Dane Mall.1 Plaintiff rented business space located at 5600 Royal Dane Mall, Ste. 203.2 Rental monies were paid to Defendant SBP Management, LLC (“SBPM”).3 Plaintiff’s communications regarding the rental of the business space were conducted through Defendant Yuri Gaspard.4 The July 4, 2019, fire swept through Royal Dane Mall and destroyed Plaintiff’s office and caused significant damage to the Royal Dane Mall.5 Plaintiff filed her Complaint for negligence on January 4, 2021. On May 14, 2024, Plaintiff served upon SBPM her first set of interrogatories and first demand for production of documents. SBPM responded to Plaintiff’s demand for production on June 18, 2024, and responded to Plaintiff’s interrogatories on June 20, 2024. Plaintiff claims that the responses were insufficient and requested supplemental responses from SBPM. 1 D.’s Answer & Counterclaim, ¶1, P.’s Answer to Counterclaim, ¶ 1. 2 Amended Compl., ¶ 9. 3 Id. ¶ 8. 4 Id. ¶ 15. 5 Id. ¶¶ 35, 39. Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 2 of 7 Notwithstanding supplemental responses made by SBPM on April 14, 2025, and a meet and confer on May 30, 2025, Plaintiff maintains that the supplemental responses were insufficient. Plaintiff further states that SBPM refused to further supplement its responses. As such, Plaintiff has filed the instant motion seeking an Order from the Court compelling SBPM to fully supplement its responses to Interrogatories Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, and Demand for Production No. 7. STANDARD In general, Virgin Islands Rules of Civil Procedure 26 and 33 govern the scope of a party’s duty to disclose information during discovery and to answer interrogatories. Under V.I. R. CIV. P. 26(b)(1), parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense. In addition, V.I. R. CIV. P. 26(g)(1)(B) alludes that a discovery request should not be made for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation; and it should not be unreasonable or unduly burdensome or expensive. Furthermore, V.I. R. CIV. P. 26(b)(2)(C) provides that a court must limit a discovery request if it determines that: (i) the discovery sought is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or can be obtained from some other source that is more convenient, less burdensome, or less expensive; (ii) the party seeking discovery has had ample opportunity to obtain the information by discovery in the action; or (iii) the proposed discovery is outside the scope permitted by Rule 26(b)(1). Where the party responding to interrogatories is an entity, the interrogatories must be answered “by any officer, employee, or agent, who must furnish information available to the party.” V.I. R. CIV. P. 33(b)(1)(B). The interrogatory must be answered fully. V.I. R. CIV. P. 33(b)(3). A party served with interrogatories must provide an answer to each interrogatory unless it “represents in good faith in its response that it cannot — in the exercise of reasonable efforts — prepare an answer from information in its possession or reasonably available to the party,” V.I.R. CIV. P. 33(d), or it objects to the interrogatory. The question on whether information is available to a party to respond to an interrogatory is one of reasonableness. “The grounds for objecting to an interrogatory must be stated with specificity.” V.I.R. CIV. P. 33(b)(4). “Each interrogatory must, to the extent it is not objected to, be answered separately and fully in writing under oath.” V.I.R. CIV. P. 33(b)(3). Upon notice to other parties and affected persons, a party may move for an order compelling discovery pursuant to V.I. R. CIV. P. 37. The motion must include “a certification that the movant has in good faith conferred or attempted to confer with the person or party failing to make disclosure or discovery in an effort to obtain it without court action.” V.I. R. CIV. P. 37(a). Prior to filing a motion to compel discovery, “counsel for the parties … shall confer in a good faith Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 3 of 7 effort to eliminate the necessity for the motion – or to eliminate as many of the disputes as possible.” V.I. R. CIV. P. 37-1(a). The movant must serve a letter on opposing counsel identifying each issue or request in dispute, stating their position with respect to each, with appropriate citation to legal authority, if any, and specifying the terms of the discovery order to be sought. See V.I. R. CIV. P. 37-1(b). ANALYSIS A. DeLeon Satisfied the Meet and Confer Requirement As a preliminary matter, the Court finds that Plaintiff satisfied the requirements of V.I. R. CIV. P. 37-1(a) to meet and confer prior to filing the instant motion. Plaintiff included a certification in her motion that on November 20, 2024, she wrote to SBPM informing it that its responses were deficient, which was followed up by a January 21, 2025, request to supplement as well as to meet and confer. Further on April 16, 2025, Plaintiff wrote to SBPM informing it that its supplemental responses were insufficient. Additionally, on April 24th and 29th, 2025, Plaintiff made further requests to SBPM to supplement its responses without success. Further, that on May 30, 2025, the parties met and conferred and SBPM refused to supplement its responses. For these reasons, the Court finds that DeLeon has satisfied the meet and confer requirement prior to filing her motion to compel. V.I. R. CIV. P. 37-1(a). B. DeLeon’s Motion to Compel SBPM to respond to Interrogatories will be Granted “For discovery to progress effectively, each party must provide truthful, complete, candid, and explicit responses to each individual discovery request.” Cruz v. Virgin Islands Water & Power Auth., 2020 V.I. LEXIS 45, *7 (V.I. Sup. Ct. 2020) (internal citations omitted). The responding party must answer each interrogatory ‘separately and fully in writing,’ unless the responding party demonstrates that he cannot do so “in the exercise of reasonable efforts.” V.I. R. CIV. P. 33. The exercise of reasonable efforts can be demonstrated by describing the efforts taken to obtain the information sought. See Zanowic v. Reno, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13845, at *7 n.1 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (“In responding to interrogatories . . . a party is under a duty to make a reasonable inquiry concerning the information sought in [the] interrogatories, and a party’s failure to describe his efforts to obtain the information sought . . . renders his responses insufficient.”); see also Neogenix Oncology, Inc. v. Gordon, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155429, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. 2017) (“Where a party, despite conducting a diligent inquiry, is nevertheless unable to provide a responsive answer, any efforts utilized should be set forth in detail to ensure a sufficient response is interposed.”) (quoting In re Auction Houses Antitrust Litig., 196 F.R.D. 444, 445 (S.D.N.Y. 2000)). 1. SBPM failed to exercise reasonable efforts in responding to Interrogatory Nos. 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 19. SBPM’s response to Interrogatory Nos. 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 19 includes a statement that the corporate officer responding to the interrogatories has no personal knowledge Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 4 of 7 of the information being requested.6 DeLeon argues that SBPM failed to make a reasonable inquiry, and states, “[t]he source for a meaningful answer is not limited to documents but may be obtained through speaking to employees both current and former.”7 SBPM argues that its employees were terminated on or about May 23, 2024, prior to the submission of Plaintiff’s first set of discovery requests, and as such, SBPM had no duty to make inquiry of former employees to respond to interrogatories.8 The question, then, is whether the exercise of reasonable efforts encompasses efforts to contact former employees who may possess information response to discovery requests. The Court concludes that it does. Where former employees are reasonably identifiable and may possess responsive information by virtue of their employment during the relevant period, reasonable efforts require, at a minimum, a good-faith effort to contact those individuals. Courts in other jurisdictions interpreting Fed. R. Civ. P. 33 and addressing whether a responding party has a duty to make inquiries of former employees have generally focused, with mixed results, on whether those former employees remained within the responding party’s control. See Vakoff v. Arapahoe House, Inc., 2019 Colo. Dist. LEXIS 173, at *6 (D. Colo. 2019) (“As a matter of discretion, defendants will not be compelled to provide responses to Interrogatory Nos. 11 or 24 which contain information known to former employees who were no longer under defendants' control when the lawsuit was filed.”); Am. Int'l Specialty Lines Ins. Co. v. NWI-I, Inc., 240 F.R.D. 401, 413 (N.D. Ill. 2007) (“Because the defendants have no control over the former officers, directors or employees of Old FTL or any other successor of Old FTL or NWI, plaintiff's motion to compel defendants to interview third parties not within their control is denied”); but see, General Dynamics Corp. v. Selb Mfg. Co., 481 F.2d 1204, 1210 (8th Cir. 1973) (“Thus Frey was duty bound to secure all information available to Selb. This would include information within the personal knowledge of former Selb employees, employed by Selb at the time this action commenced.”). Here, V.I. R. Civ. P. Rule 33 requires an entity responding to interrogatories, such as SBPM, to furnish all information available to it, and in doing so, to exercise reasonable efforts to obtain the information necessary to provide complete and responsive answers. Rule 33 does not turn on the entity’s control over information; rather it requires the responding party to take reasonable steps to respond fully. SBPM’s refusal to contact its former employees to obtain information response to the interrogatories – particularly where those individuals were employed by SBPM at the time the cause of action arose – falls well short of the reasonable efforts required to satisfy its discovery obligations. SBPM cannot avoid its obligation to provide responsive information merely because the individuals who may possess such information are no longer employed by SBPM. At a minimum, reasonable diligence required SBPM to undertake a good-faith effort to contact those former employees and ascertain whether they possessed information responsive to the interrogatories. 6 For example, in response to Interrogatory No. 19, SBPM stated, “The corporate officer answering these Interrogatories was not present at the U.S.V.I. at the time of the fire and does not have any specific knowledge about the condition of the units at the time of the fire.” Pl. Mot. to Compel, at 10. 7 Id. at 2. 8 Def. Resp. in Opp. at 2. Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 5 of 7 Accordingly, the Court will enter an Order compelling SBPM to provide full and complete responses to Interrogatory Nos. 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 19. 2. SBPM failed to respond in full to Interrogatory No. 22. Interrogatory No. 22 states: Please identify by date and describe in detail the substance of all communications with Plaintiff concerning any issues with the AC units in Plaintiff’s office at any time during her tenancy on the subject property, including any communications regarding her use of the AC units, the condition of the AC units, maintenance and repairs to the AC units, the replacement of the AC units, and any instructions, guidelines, or warnings you discussed with Plaintiff or agreements reached with Plaintiff concerning the purchase of new AC units for Plaintiff’s office, state the method of each communication and identify all parties to each communication.9 SBPM’s response states: 1. Plaintiff was told that she replaced her old AC units with new ones without landlord’s approval. 2. Plaintiff was told that her new AC units were left running on numerous occasions after her office hours, sometime for days.10 SBPM’s supplemental response states: At the time of the commencement of the lease, the plaintiff’s unit had an old AC unit. Subsequently, the Plaintiff replaced the old unit with a new system without any approval from, or any notification to the Defendant (landlord).11 SBPM’s response, and its supplemental response, failed to provide any dates of communications regarding concerns with the AC units. The responses also failed to state any agreements reached with DeLeon concerning the purchase of new AC units, the method of each communication, and identification of all parties to each communication. Accordingly, SBPM did not answer Interrogatory No. 22 in full and will be required to supplement its responses. 9 Pl. Mot. to Compel, Ex. 4 at 9. 10 Id. at 10. 11 Id. Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 6 of 7 C. DeLeon’s Motion to Compel SBPM to Produce Responsive Documents to Demands for Production will be granted. DeLeon seeks an order compelling SBPM to respond in full to Demand for Production Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 14. SBPM’s response to each of the foregoing demands for production states: Objection. Defendant’s management office was destroyed by the fire and the office files along with all documents were lost.12 SBPM’s supplemental response to each Demand for Production states (verbatim): All documents (paper or electronic copies) were located in the SBP Management Office. The fire destroyed all files, boxes containing paper documents, and computers. The Plaintiff visited the property shortly after the fire and saw the destruction of the management office.13 V.I. R. CIV. P. 34, which is identical to its federal counterpart, Fed. R. Civ. P. 34, requires a party to produce relevant documents that are in the responding party’s possession, custody, or control. Because Rule 34 is identical to Fed. R. Civ. P. 34, cases interpreting the federal rule provide persuasive authority for this Court to consider. Courts have held that “[u]nder Rule 34(a) a responding party is required ‘to conduct a reasonable and diligent search for responsive documents.’” Thuman v. Dembski, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 73908, at *23 (W.D.N.Y. 2022) (quoting Wilson v. Town of Cheektowaga, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10209, at *3 (W.D.N.Y. 2021)); see also Gainer v. United Auto. Agric. Implement Workers, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196143, at *5 (W.D.N.Y. 2016). Here, SBPM served the same boilerplate, verbatim response to each of the identified requests for production. This is inadequate. SBPM has made no showing that it conducted a reasonable and diligent search for documents responsive to DeLeon’s requests. Specifically, SBPM has not represented that it searched its business server files, electronic files, or email accounts, nor has it indicated that it contacted corporate counsel or other potential custodians of responsive documents and was unable to locate them. Whether DeLeon may have some independent means of obtaining the documents is beside the point. The relevant inquiry is whether SBPM has fulfilled its own discovery obligations. SBPM may not shift that burden to DeLeon merely because DeLeon might be able to obtain the requested documents through other means. As such, the Court will enter an order directing SBPM to supplement its responses to the Demands for Production. Accordingly, it is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiff DeLeon’s Motion to Compel Defendant SBP Management, LLC to Supplement its Responses to Plaintiff’s Written Discovery is GRANTED; and it is further ORDERED that, on or before November 6, 2026, Defendant SBP Management, LLC 12 Id. at 2–3, & 5. 13 Id. at 11–14. Julita de Leon v. SBP Royal Dane Mall, LLC, et. al. ST-2021-CV-00001 Memorandum Opinion and Order Page 7 of 7 shall respond fully and completely to the following numbered interrogatories in Plaintiff DeLeon’s First Set of Interrogatories (served upon Defendant on May 14, 2024): 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 19; and it is further ORDERED that, on or before November 6, 2026, Defendant SBP Management, LLC shall supplement its responses, upon a reasonable and diligent search, to the following numbered demands for production of documents (served upon Defendant on May 14, 2024): 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 14; and it is further ORDERED that Defendant SBP Management, LLC’s failure to comply with this Memorandum Opinion and Order may result in sanctions, including, but not limited to, holding Defendant and its counsel in civil contempt; and it is further ORDERED that a copy of this Memorandum Opinion and Order shall be directed to Attorney Lee J. Rohn, counsel for Plaintiff, and Attorney Douglas L. Capdeville, counsel for Defendants. DATED: October 23, 2026 HON. RENÉE MARIE ANDRÉ Judge of the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands ATTEST: TAMARA CHARLES Clerk of the Court 10/28/2026 BY: ________________________________ for LATOYA A. CAMACHO Court Clerk Supervisor: ____/____/____