Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Kings Index No.: 524343/2025 Assigned: Hon. Brian L. Gotlieb, J.S.C. Plaintiff: Richard C. Litman (Pro Se) Defendants: Joshua B. Goldberg; Nath, Goldberg & Meyer, PLLC Served upon: Aaron H. Gould, Esq. and Leo J. Hurley, Jr., Esq., Connell Foley LLP, counsel for Defendants Date: April 16, 2026
Pursuant to CPLR §§ 3120, 3122, and 3124 and the Preliminary Conference Order entered in this action, Plaintiff Richard C. Litman hereby serves this Supplemental Demand for Production upon Defendants Joshua B. Goldberg and Nath, Goldberg & Meyer, PLLC ("NGM"). Defendants shall produce the documents described below, in the format specified in Section VIII, within thirty (30) days of the date of service.
This Supplemental Demand is addressed to a systematic deficiency in Defendants' prior production. Across the entire Defendants-produced email corpus — comprising production set ND0001 (181,570 records) and production set ND0002 (95,329 records), for a combined total of 276,899 emails — the author search returns zero emails from agould@connellfoley.com and a near-zero count of any other @connellfoley.com addresses. Connell Foley LLP has been counsel of record for Defendants on this matter for the entirety of the post-litigation period (July 2025 through the present), during which the firm has necessarily generated substantial correspondence in the ordinary course of an active and contested civil action.
The absence of this correspondence from Defendants' production cannot be reconciled with any innocent explanation. Either (a) Defendants withheld every attorney-client communication with Connell Foley without producing the privilege log CPLR § 3122(b) requires, (b) Defendants applied an undisclosed "Connell Foley" filter that excluded the firm's correspondence categorically regardless of privilege status, or (c) NGM never communicated with its litigation counsel via the custodial accounts searched for production — a proposition that is implausible on its face given the scope of the action, the number of motions filed, the existence of a Preliminary Conference Order, and the scheduled deposition window.
The exclusion is not theoretical. Plaintiff has in his possession at least two items of Connell Foley correspondence that should have appeared in Defendants' production:
The Gould 3/17/2026 "access never revoked" email — already Bates-stamped on the Plaintiff side of the production as LITMAN006237 — establishing that Connell Foley correspondence does in fact exist in matter files, does travel through ordinary email infrastructure, and is Bates-producible in the format used throughout this litigation; and
The Gould 9/3/2025 three-admissions email — copying Cherylyn Tanner, Matt Ramin, and Leo J. Hurley, Jr., Esq. — delivered to Plaintiff at rclitman@gmail.com and expressly acknowledging the 2024 accounting, the litman@4patent.com domain issue, and the proposed use agreement as live, unresolved matters.
Neither of those two items appears in Defendants' ND0001 or ND0002 production, notwithstanding that each was addressed to an NGM-affiliated or NGM-represented recipient, was transmitted through @connellfoley.com infrastructure, and would in the ordinary course have been retained in NGM's own email files. The exclusion is not a retention gap — it is a production gap.
No privilege log has been served. On the face of CPLR § 3122(b), that is itself a waiver. The categories below seek (i) the privilege log required by rule; (ii) the non-privileged Connell Foley correspondence that is not subject to any privilege; (iii) the narrow set of privileged-but-loggable categories on subjects of heightened significance to the surviving § 51 claim; (iv) specifically identified items visible in Plaintiff-side production but absent from the Defendants-side production; and (v) custodial and search-methodology transparency sufficient to permit Plaintiff and the Court to assess what was searched, what was withheld, and on what basis.
CPLR § 3122(b) requires that, where a party withholds documents on the basis of privilege or work-product, the withholding party must produce a log sufficiently particularized to permit the demanding party and the Court to assess each claim of privilege. Defendants have produced no such log with respect to Connell Foley correspondence, notwithstanding the evident systematic withholding of that correspondence. Under well-settled New York authority, a non-particularized or omitted privilege log is itself waiver of the privilege claimed. See, e.g., Anonymous v. High School for Envtl. Studies, 32 A.D.3d 353 (1st Dep't 2006); DG&A Mgmt. Servs., LLC v. Securities Indus. Ass'n Compliance & Legal Div., 78 A.D.3d 1316 (3d Dep't 2010).
Request No. 1 — CPLR § 3122(b)-compliant privilege log. Produce a complete privilege log, in native Excel or Concordance-compatible format, identifying every email, letter, memorandum, or other document withheld from Defendants' prior productions (ND0001 and ND0002, and any subsequent production) on the basis of any claimed privilege, work-product protection, common-interest doctrine, or any other basis, that was authored by, addressed to, copied to, or received by any attorney, paralegal, or staff member of Connell Foley LLP. For each entry the log shall state: (a) document date; (b) author / sender; (c) every recipient, including "To," "CC," and "BCC"; (d) subject line; (e) document type (email, letter, memorandum, draft, etc.); (f) the precise basis for the withholding (attorney-client privilege, work product, common interest, etc.); (g) the subject-matter category of the document, in sufficient detail to permit assessment; and (h) a unique log identifier.
Request No. 2 — Family relationships. For each logged item that is a parent email or parent document, the log shall identify every attachment by filename and, where applicable, by file type, together with the privilege status of each attachment assessed individually. A document shall not be withheld solely on the basis that its parent or one of its attachments is privileged; each record within a family must be separately assessed.
Request No. 3 — Certification. The privilege log shall be accompanied by a sworn certification, signed by counsel with personal knowledge, that (a) the log identifies every Connell Foley-related document withheld from production; (b) the log entries accurately reflect the basis for withholding; and (c) no non-privileged Connell Foley correspondence has been withheld from production under color of any privilege claim.
Request No. 4 — Waiver acknowledgment. To the extent no privilege log is served within the thirty-day period prescribed by this Demand, Defendants shall be deemed to have waived any privilege with respect to Connell Foley correspondence and shall produce that correspondence in its entirety.
The categories below are, by their nature, not subject to any colorable claim of attorney-client privilege or work-product protection. Correspondence addressed to an opposing party or to a non-client third party is not privileged; it cannot become privileged merely because the author happens to be defense counsel. Defendants must produce each of the following in full.
Request No. 5 — Connell Foley to Plaintiff (Litman) correspondence. Produce every email, letter, text, or other communication — and every attachment thereto — sent by any Connell Foley attorney, paralegal, or staff member to Plaintiff Richard C. Litman (at any email address, including rclitman@gmail.com, litman@4patent.com, r.litman@4patent.com, rlitman@nathlaw.com, or any other address) at any time from July 1, 2025 through the present. Correspondence already disclosed to the opposing party cannot be privileged; there is no colorable basis for withholding.
Request No. 6 — Connell Foley to third-party correspondence. Produce every email, letter, or other communication — and every attachment thereto — sent by any Connell Foley attorney, paralegal, or staff member to any third party — including without limitation the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Bank of America, Eagle Bank, Freedom Bank of Virginia, any vendor, any e-discovery provider, any court reporter, any process server, any opposing counsel in any other NGM or Goldberg matter, or any non-party deponent — that references, relates to, or concerns this action, Plaintiff, NGM, Goldberg, the subject-matter identified in the Second Amended Complaint, or any subject identified in the Gould 9/3/2025 Email.
Request No. 7 — Court and arbitration correspondence. Produce every email, letter, filing, transmittal, or other communication sent by any Connell Foley attorney, paralegal, or staff member to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Kings; to the NYSCEF system; to any arbitrator, arbitration administrator, or AAA office; or to any other tribunal, that references, relates to, or concerns this action. Court filings are public records and cannot be privileged regardless of how they were transmitted.
Request No. 8 — Connell Foley to former NGM personnel correspondence. Produce every email, letter, or other communication sent by any Connell Foley attorney, paralegal, or staff member to any former NGM employee, contractor, or agent who departed NGM on or after June 15, 2020, including without limitation Heba Carter. Communications with former employees — who are no longer within the client's control group — are not privileged absent extraordinary circumstances that must be established on a log.
Request No. 9 — Expert and consultant correspondence. Produce every email, letter, or other communication sent by any Connell Foley attorney, paralegal, or staff member to any retained or prospective expert witness, forensic accountant, forensic e-discovery consultant, bookkeeper, insurance-coverage consultant, or other non-attorney consultant, that references, relates to, or concerns this action. Communications with non-testifying consultants may be work-product-protected and loggable; communications with testifying experts are discoverable under CPLR § 3101(d).
Request No. 10 — Administrative and logistical correspondence. Produce every email, letter, scheduling notice, deposition notice, court-reporter engagement, courier transmittal, billing invoice, or retainer statement exchanged by Connell Foley with NGM, with Plaintiff, or with any third party, that is non-substantive and logistical in nature. Purely administrative correspondence is not privileged.
Plaintiff does not seek privileged communications; Plaintiff seeks (a) the privilege log that CPLR § 3122(b) requires for the privileged set, and (b) in camera review of any specific item as to which the parties cannot resolve a privilege dispute. The following categories are identified here so that the log, when produced, may be assessed against these subject-matter headings.
Request No. 11 — Subject-matter enumeration on log. The CPLR § 3122(b) log demanded in Request No. 1 shall separately identify every NGM ↔ Connell Foley communication — including correspondence to or from Joshua B. Goldberg, Jerald Meyer, Howard W. Kline, Ilirian Durri, Martha Long, Tanya Harkins, any member of NGM accounting or administrative staff, or any other NGM principal, employee, or agent — that concerns any of the following subjects: (a) the 2024 accounting; (b) the litman@4patent.com domain or mailbox, the 4patent.com domain, or Amendment Section 3; (c) the proposed use agreement referenced in the Gould 9/3/2025 Email; (d) the elimination, restriction, or reassignment of Plaintiff's email-account access on or about July 18, 2025; (e) the closure by transfer of Freedom Bank of Virginia account 220001028 on or about July 28, 2025, or any other Freedom Bank account; (f) USPTO Customer Number 37833, including the May 1, 2025 change of correspondence address; (g) Plaintiff's deposition notice, the deposition default of February 24, 2026, or any deposition-related communications; (h) the suppression, delayed production, or concealment of any Payment Allocation Report, quarterly accounting, or trust-account record; and (i) the "access never revoked" issue referenced in the Gould 3/17/2026 email (Bates LITMAN006237).
Request No. 12 — Reservation of in camera review. Plaintiff reserves the right to request in camera review under CPLR § 3122(b) of any specifically identified log entry that Plaintiff contends is not properly privileged, that has been waived by production to or disclosure to any third party, or as to which the crime-fraud exception applies in light of the active-concealment pattern referenced in Section IX below.
Request No. 13 — Common-interest and joint-representation disclosures. Produce every engagement letter, co-counsel agreement, common-interest agreement, joint-defense agreement, or comparable writing between Connell Foley LLP and Joshua B. Goldberg individually, between Connell Foley LLP and NGM, or among any combination thereof, that defines the scope of representation or joint-privilege status during the Relevant Period. Engagement letters are not themselves privileged; they define the metes and bounds of any privilege claim.
The following items are known to exist by virtue of Plaintiff's own receipt of them. Each was transmitted through ordinary @connellfoley.com email infrastructure, each would in the ordinary course have been retained in NGM's own email files (either on NGM accounts or on NGM-controlled mailboxes addressed by the correspondence), and each is absent from Defendants' ND0001 and ND0002 production. The absence of Defendants-side copies of these items is conclusive proof of a production gap — not a retention gap.
Request No. 14 — Gould 3/17/2026 "access never revoked" email and thread (Bates LITMAN006237). Produce (a) the native .msg or .eml file of the Gould 3/17/2026 email Bates-stamped LITMAN006237 on the Plaintiff side, as it existed in any NGM-controlled mailbox; (b) the complete parent thread of that email — including every upstream and downstream message in the reply chain, every internal NGM forwarding of the thread, and every response drafted or sent by any NGM principal — in native format with metadata preserved; and (c) every internal Connell Foley and internal NGM communication discussing the drafting, review, approval, or follow-up of that email.
Request No. 15 — Gould 9/3/2025 three-admissions email and thread. Produce (a) the native .msg or .eml file of the September 3, 2025 email from Aaron H. Gould, Esq. to Plaintiff, copying Cherylyn Tanner, Matt Ramin, and Leo J. Hurley, Jr., Esq., as it existed in any NGM-controlled mailbox; (b) the complete parent thread of that email — including every upstream and downstream message; (c) every draft of that email, including tracked-changes and comment-bearing versions; and (d) every internal Connell Foley and internal NGM communication discussing the drafting, review, or approval of that email, or the subjects it raises (the 2024 accounting, the litman@4patent.com domain issue, and the proposed use agreement).
Request No. 16 — All other specifically identified Plaintiff-side Connell Foley items. For every Bates-stamped item in the Plaintiff-side production set that originated from or was transmitted by Connell Foley LLP, produce the corresponding NGM-side copy of the same document (native format, metadata preserved, parent–attachment relationships intact) that should have appeared in Defendants' production.
Request No. 17 — Gap reconciliation statement. For each item demanded in Requests Nos. 14, 15, and 16 that Defendants contend is not in their possession, custody, or control, provide a sworn statement from a custodian with personal knowledge (a) confirming that the item was searched for in NGM's email archive, Microsoft 365 tenant, back-up media, and any other reasonably accessible source; (b) identifying the custodial accounts and date ranges searched; and (c) stating with particularity why the item was not recovered.
The systematic exclusion of Connell Foley correspondence from a 276,899-record production cannot be evaluated without transparency as to what Defendants did — and did not — search, collect, process, and produce. The categories below seek that transparency.
Request No. 18 — Identification of custodians. Produce a complete list of every email custodian whose mailbox or archive was searched, collected, or otherwise reviewed in connection with ND0001, ND0002, and any subsequent production in this action, together with (a) the date range searched for each custodian; (b) the source system from which each custodian's records were collected (Microsoft 365 tenant, on-premises Exchange, PST archive, back-up media, or other); and (c) whether any subset of each custodian's mailbox was excluded from collection.
Request No. 19 — Search-term methodology. Produce a complete list of every search term, Boolean string, filter, date restriction, domain restriction, and inclusion / exclusion criterion used to identify documents for production or withholding in ND0001, ND0002, and any subsequent production. Identify specifically (a) whether any filter excluded the @connellfoley.com domain or any @connellfoley string; (b) whether any filter excluded any other counsel-related domain; (c) whether any filter excluded documents designated or tagged as privileged without corresponding privilege-log creation; and (d) the hit-count and disposition at each stage of the review pipeline.
Request No. 20 — Exclusion lists and do-not-produce criteria. Produce every "exclusion list," "de-duplication list," "do-not-produce" list, "privilege screen," "domain exclusion filter," or comparable criterion applied at any stage of collection, processing, review, or production. Identify the author of each such list or criterion and the date on which it was applied.
Request No. 21 — Sworn custodial statement. Produce a sworn statement, signed by the person responsible for Defendants' production under penalty of perjury, (a) confirming that the production, as produced, reflects the entirety of non-privileged responsive records; (b) identifying the basis on which Connell Foley correspondence was excluded (if excluded); (c) confirming whether any such exclusion was made without privilege-log creation; and (d) confirming that no destruction, purge, archive-rotation, or retention-schedule-driven loss of any Connell Foley correspondence has occurred since the filing of this action.
"Connell Foley Correspondence" means any email, letter, fax, text, SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp message, Teams message, Slack message, other instant message, voicemail, voicemail transcript, or any other written or recorded electronic communication originating from, sent to, copied to, blind-copied to, or forwarded by any attorney, paralegal, legal assistant, secretary, information-technology staff member, or other employee, contractor, or agent of Connell Foley LLP, including without limitation Aaron H. Gould, Esq., Leo J. Hurley, Jr., Esq., and any person using an @connellfoley.com or @connellfoley email address.
"Privilege Log" means a log conforming to CPLR § 3122(b) and to the Commercial Division rules, sufficiently particularized to permit the demanding party and the Court to assess each claim of privilege or work-product protection, and containing at minimum the fields specified in Request No. 1 above.
"Production Set ND0001" means the Defendants-produced email corpus bearing Bates prefixes beginning with C2051472_ND0000 in the ND0001 tranche, totaling approximately 181,570 records.
"Production Set ND0002" means the Defendants-produced email corpus in the ND0002 tranche, totaling approximately 95,329 records.
"Plaintiff-Side Bates" means the Bates prefix LITMAN applied to documents produced by Plaintiff in the ordinary course of this litigation, exemplified by LITMAN006237 (the Gould 3/17/2026 "access never revoked" email).
"Custodian" means any NGM principal, employee, contractor, or agent whose mailbox, archive, or electronic records were or should have been searched for responsive documents, including without limitation Joshua B. Goldberg, Jerald Meyer, Howard W. Kline, Ilirian Durri, Martha Long, Tanya Harkins, Stephen Leon, MaryJane Harper, any NGM accounting or administrative personnel, and any shared or role-based mailbox (including clientservice@4patent.com, docketing@nathlaw.com, or any other NGM-controlled distribution or alias).
"Relevant Period" means June 15, 2020 through the present, with particular emphasis on July 1, 2025 through the present (the active-litigation period during which Connell Foley has been counsel of record). The "present" end date is necessary because Connell Foley continues to serve as counsel of record through the date of this Demand.
"Document" has the meaning set forth in CPLR § 3120 and includes every electronic record in native format with associated metadata preserved.
"Native Format" means the file format in which the document was originally created, maintained, and stored in the ordinary course of business, with all metadata, hidden text, comments, tracked changes, and embedded attachments intact.
Defendants are hereby on notice that every item of Connell Foley correspondence in NGM's possession, custody, or control — including items in the custody of Connell Foley LLP itself acting on NGM's behalf — is the subject of this Demand. Defendants and their agents, and Connell Foley LLP acting on Defendants' behalf, shall immediately suspend any routine deletion, purge, overwrite, archive-rotation, retention-schedule-driven destruction, or similar loss of any email, text, chat message, draft document, metadata field, Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online administrative record, mailbox audit log, admin audit log, back-up file, or litigation-support index relating to any Connell Foley correspondence.
The factual premise of this Demand — that Connell Foley correspondence in fact exists and in fact traveled through ordinary email infrastructure — is not in dispute. LITMAN006237 (Gould 3/17/2026) and the Gould 9/3/2025 three-admissions email are contemporaneous, authenticable, native-format items in Plaintiff's Bates-stamped possession. Defendants cannot credibly claim that Connell Foley correspondence does not exist, cannot be located, or is not recoverable. Any subsequent destruction or loss will be treated as presumptively spoliative and will support a motion for an adverse inference and sanctions under CPLR § 3126.
.msg files and .eml files shall be produced in native format with full header metadata — including sender, all recipients (To, CC, BCC), sent and received dates and times, message-ID, in-reply-to, and references fields — and all attachments intact, linked by load file..docx) or originating-format file where available, with version-history and track-changes metadata intact. Any redactions asserted on the basis of privilege must be accompanied by a privilege-log entry conforming to CPLR § 3122(b) and the Commercial Division rules; non-privilege redactions are not permitted absent court order..xlsx) or Concordance-compatible format, with the fields specified in Request No. 1. A PDF-only log is not acceptable.Custodian, Sent Date, Received Date, Created Date, Last Modified Date, Author, From, To, CC, BCC, Subject, Attachment Names, Message-ID, In-Reply-To, MD5Hash, and File Path shall be populated for every record.@connellfoley.com exclusion) at any stage of the production pipeline other than the creation of a compliant privilege log for genuinely privileged items.Plaintiff is prepared to meet and confer in good faith concerning the scope, phasing, or technical format of this Supplemental Demand before seeking relief from the Court under CPLR § 3124. Plaintiff requests a written response identifying, for each numbered request, whether Defendants (a) will produce, (b) will produce subject to stated objections, or (c) refuse to produce. Any objection must specify the documents being withheld and the basis for the objection with particularity sufficient to permit resolution without judicial intervention.
The systematic exclusion of Connell Foley correspondence from Defendants' production does not stand alone. It is the latest instance in a documented pattern of partial and selective production in this action, including: the eight-month suppression of the July 2025 Payment Allocation Report (generated August 11, 2025; produced only in April 2026); the non-disclosure of Freedom Bank of Virginia trust accounts 220001028 and 220001002 on the Schaefer/Kren report of June 26, 2025, while concurrently appearing on NGM's internal Trust Register Report generated six days later; the misrepresentation that the litman@4patent.com mailbox had been "eliminated" while approximately 8,024 subsequent emails continued to land in the mailbox through at least December 31, 2025; the six-month gap in the quarterly / monthly accounting series (Q2 2023 and Q3 2023) bracketing the arbitration Award of June 14, 2023; and the continuing absence of any written follow-up response to the three issues acknowledged in the Gould 9/3/2025 Email. Defense counsel's own correspondence is the next link in that chain.
Absent a complete response and production within thirty (30) days — including, at a minimum, a CPLR § 3122(b)-compliant privilege log, the non-privileged Connell Foley correspondence demanded in Category 2, and the specifically identified missing documents demanded in Category 4 — Plaintiff will move to compel, for spoliation sanctions, and for an order deeming privilege waived as to all unlogged Connell Foley correspondence, together with costs, an adverse inference, and such additional sanctions as are authorized under CPLR § 3126.
Dated: April 16, 2026
Respectfully submitted,
Richard C. Litman Plaintiff, Pro Se [Address] [Telephone] [Email]
Via Email and First-Class Mail
Aaron H. Gould, Esq. Leo J. Hurley, Jr., Esq. Connell Foley LLP [Firm Address]
Re: Litman v. Goldberg, Index No. 524343/2025 (Sup. Ct., Kings Cnty.) — Supplemental Demand for Production of Connell Foley Outbound Correspondence and Privilege Log
Dear Mr. Gould and Mr. Hurley:
Enclosed please find Plaintiff's Supplemental Demand for Production, served today pursuant to CPLR §§ 3120, 3122, and 3124. The Demand is addressed to a systematic deficiency in Defendants' prior production: across the entire ND0001 and ND0002 corpus (276,899 emails combined), there are zero emails from
agould@connellfoley.comand a near-zero count of any other Connell Foley addresses, notwithstanding that your firm has been counsel of record throughout the active-litigation period. No privilege log has been served.The Gould 3/17/2026 "access never revoked" email (Bates
LITMAN006237on the Plaintiff side) and the Gould 9/3/2025 three-admissions email establish that Connell Foley correspondence exists in matter files and travels through ordinary email infrastructure; it was simply not produced.Please advise by [date + 14 days] whether Defendants will produce a CPLR § 3122(b)-compliant privilege log, the non-privileged Connell Foley correspondence, and the specifically identified missing items within the thirty-day period, or whether a meet-and-confer conference is necessary.
Very truly yours,
Richard C. Litman Pro Se