On December 19, 2023, Justice Chan of the New York County Commercial Division issued a decision in Millennium Consolidated Holdings, LLC v. Bluefin Capital Mgt., LLC, 2023 NY Slip Op. 34466(U), rejecting a subpoena as a fishing expedition, explaining:
[T]he Subpoena, in its current form, is improper and deficient. It is well settled that a party may not use procedural mechanism of a subpoena duces tecum to expand the discovery available under existing law. To this end, a subpoena duces tecum cannot be used to ascertain the existence of evidence or as a fishing expedition. Rather, its purpose is to compel the production of specific documents that are relevant and material to facts at issue in a pending judicial proceeding. Here, the Subpoena contains a single request: Any and all documents and communications produced to [Zhou] by Millennium in connection with the FINRA Dispute, including without limitation all documents concerning the claims, counterclaims, and defenses asserted in connection with the FINRA Dispute. In propounding this request, Bluefin neither imposes a limiting principle tailored to the issues in this litigation nor attempts to articulate what categories of relevant and material documents Zhou may possess from the FINRA proceedings. Rather, the Subpoena is a textbook example of shooting first and asking questions later. Indeed, Bluefin is directing Zhou-an apparently friendly subpoena target-to produce all documents produced by Millennium, regardless of their relevance to the instant action, and is doing so to ascertain-on its own terms after the dust settles-the existence of potentially relevant evidence amid a trove of documents. Courts may favor efficiency in the discovery process, but this court will not countenance such a blatant fishing expedition by Bluefin.
Of course, there may be potentially relevant documents produced by Millennium during the FINRA arbitration that are in Zhou’s possession. Bluefin is therefore free to propound a new subpoena to Zhou seeking specific categories of material and necessary documents that it believes Zhou possesses. And Millennium, in turn, remains free to raise objections to those categories of documents and challenge the validity of the Subpoena as necessary. But it ultimately does not fall on the court to prune the scope of the Subpoena and cull the good from the bad. Accordingly, the Subpoena, in its current form, is quashed in its entirety.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).