SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF KINGS
------------------------------------------------------------x RICHARD C. LITMAN,
Plaintiff,
-against- Index No. 524343/2025
JOSHUA B. GOLDBERG, NATH, GOLDBERG & MEYER, and NATH & ASSOCIATES PLLC, Hon. Brian L. Gotlieb, J.S.C.
Defendants.
------------------------------------------------------------x
PLAINTIFF'S SUPPLEMENTAL DEMAND FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS AND INTERROGATORIES DIRECTED TO THE JULY 2023 — SEPTEMBER 2023 PAYMENT ALLOCATION REPORTING GAP
TO: Aaron Gould, Esq. CONNELL FOLEY LLP Attorneys for Defendants
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that, pursuant to CPLR Article 31 and §§ 3120 and 3130, plaintiff Richard C. Litman ("Plaintiff" or "Litman"), by and through his attorneys, hereby demands that defendants Joshua B. Goldberg, Nath, Goldberg & Meyer, and Nath & Associates PLLC (collectively, "Defendants" or "NGM") produce the documents and respond to the interrogatories set forth below within thirty (30) days of service hereof, at the offices of plaintiff's counsel or by electronic transmission acceptable to plaintiff's counsel.
This demand is targeted, narrow, and supplemental to plaintiff's prior discovery requests. It is occasioned by plaintiff's recent forensic audit of the twenty-four (24) month period from July 2023 through June 2025, which revealed that NGM has produced standalone monthly Payment Allocation by Client Reports for only twenty-one (21) of those twenty-four months. The three missing months — July 2023, August 2023, and September 2023 — are the first three months immediately following the June 14, 2023 arbitration award and are the precise period during which NGM was first obliged to commence monthly accounting to plaintiff. Plaintiff requires the materials demanded herein in advance of the June 2, 2026 discovery cutoff and the April 2, 2026 Bill of Particulars deadline.
"NGM" means Nath, Goldberg & Meyer, Nath & Associates PLLC, and any predecessor, successor, affiliate, parent, subsidiary, or d/b/a entity, and any of its members, partners, employees, agents, or attorneys.
"Goldberg" means defendant Joshua B. Goldberg, individually and in any capacity in which he acted or purported to act on behalf of NGM.
"Litman" or "Plaintiff" means Richard C. Litman.
"Payment Allocation Report" or "Report" means any document — in PDF, Excel, Word, hand-written, electronic, or any other form — bearing the title or substantive content of a "Payment Allocation by Client Report," "Payment Allocation by Client Report for RCL as originating attorney," "Firm-Wide Payment Allocation Report," or any similarly captioned periodic accounting that purports to reflect funds collected, fees earned, costs disbursed, or amounts owed to Richard C. Litman as originating attorney, including all preliminary, draft, final, superseded, revised, "updated," or "_1" versions thereof.
"Litman-Originated Matter" means any matter, docket, file, client engagement, or sub-matter coded internally to NGM Attorney Number 418, or otherwise originated by, brought in by, transitioned from, or attributable in whole or in part to Richard C. Litman, including but not limited to matters for King Faisal University (KFU), King Saud University (KSU), Kuwait University, Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC), Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), Dasman Diabetes Institute, Sabah Al Ahmad Center, MSRDC, and any client whose docket number begins with "1," "J," or "5" or which has at any time been associated with Customer Number 37833 at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
"PCLaw" means the PCLaw practice management and billing system used by NGM at any time relevant to this action.
"Soluno" means the Soluno cloud accounting and billing platform used by NGM at any time relevant to this action, including any data migration into or out of PCLaw.
"Master Spreadsheet" means the Excel workbook captioned "Litman 2025 Summary," "Litman Summary," or any similarly titled summary workbook prepared by Goldberg, NGM staff, or NGM counsel that aggregates monthly Payment Allocation figures, including but not limited to the workbook last produced as 20250613_Litman 2025 Summary_May.xlsx.
"Audit Window" means the twenty-four (24) month period from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2025, inclusive.
"Gap Months" means July 2023, August 2023, and September 2023, individually and collectively.
"Communication" means any transmission of information of any kind, by any means, including without limitation email, text message, instant message, Slack, Teams, voicemail, letter, memorandum, note, or any other oral or written exchange, and includes attachments, drafts, and metadata.
"Document" is used in its broadest sense under CPLR § 3101 and includes electronically stored information ("ESI") in native format with all metadata intact.
Instructions.
a. These demands are continuing in nature. If responsive material is generated, located, or comes into Defendants' possession, custody, or control after service of any response, Defendants must supplement under CPLR § 3101(h).
b. ESI shall be produced in its native format with all metadata preserved. Spreadsheets shall be produced as native .xlsx files with all formulas, tabs, and hidden columns intact.
c. If any document is withheld on a claim of privilege, produce a privilege log compliant with CPLR § 3122(b) and Uniform Rule 202.20-c.
d. If any responsive document has been lost, destroyed, deleted, or otherwise rendered inaccessible, identify the document, the date and circumstances of its loss, and the person responsible.
The June 14, 2023 arbitration award imposed upon NGM an ongoing obligation to provide plaintiff with periodic accountings of fees collected on Litman-originated matters and to remit plaintiff's twenty percent (20%) share. From October 2023 forward, NGM produced standalone monthly Payment Allocation by Client Reports in PDF format on a regular cadence, generally within the first two weeks of the following month. Twenty-one (21) such Reports exist for the period October 2023 through June 2025.
For the three months immediately preceding October 2023 — July 2023, August 2023, and September 2023 — no standalone Payment Allocation Report has ever been produced to plaintiff. Instead, the figures for those months exist only as line entries inside Goldberg's self-prepared Master Spreadsheet, and they appear in irregular, non-monthly form: a single July 2023 line, a combined "August through September 15, 2023" line, and a partial "September 16-30, 2023" line. Together, those three undocumented months represent approximately $1,726,719 in collected fees and $345,344 in twenty-percent allocations owed to plaintiff — none of it independently verifiable in contemporaneous monthly form.
The Gap Months also bookend a parallel and conspicuous reporting blackout at the opposite end of the Audit Window. Beginning with the May 2025 Report (the first month showing $0 paid against an amount owed) and continuing through the elimination of plaintiff's email accounts on July 18, 2025, and into the post-elimination period of July, August, and September 2025, NGM ceased producing monthly Payment Allocation Reports altogether. The Jul-Sep 2023 gap (irregular reporting at the start of the post-arbitration window) and the Jul-Sep 2025 gap (no reporting at the end of the post-arbitration window) together describe a pattern of selective compliance.
This demand seeks the documents necessary to reconstruct the Gap Months, to test the accuracy of the Master Spreadsheet figures against the underlying billing systems, to identify which client matters were collected upon during the Gap Months, and to explain why the standalone monthly reporting cadence was not implemented until October 2023.
Demand No. 1. All Payment Allocation Reports — including any draft, preliminary, final, superseded, revised, "updated," or "_1" version — generated, prepared, drafted, exchanged, reviewed, or maintained for the month of July 2023, in any form (PDF, Excel, Word, paper, or otherwise), including both "for RCL as originating attorney" Reports and "Firm-Wide" comparison Reports.
Demand No. 2. All Payment Allocation Reports — including any draft, preliminary, final, superseded, revised, "updated," or "_1" version — generated, prepared, drafted, exchanged, reviewed, or maintained for the month of August 2023, in any form, including both "for RCL as originating attorney" Reports and "Firm-Wide" comparison Reports, and including any Report covering all or any portion of August 2023 (including any combined "August-September 15, 2023" Report).
Demand No. 3. All Payment Allocation Reports — including any draft, preliminary, final, superseded, revised, "updated," or "_1" version — generated, prepared, drafted, exchanged, reviewed, or maintained for the month of September 2023, in any form, including both "for RCL as originating attorney" Reports and "Firm-Wide" comparison Reports, and including any Report covering only a partial period within September 2023 (such as the "September 16-30, 2023" line entry that appears in the Master Spreadsheet).
Demand No. 4. The complete PCLaw transaction journal, in native exportable format, for the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023, showing every payment received, every trust deposit, every trust-to-operating transfer, every disbursement, every fee posting, and every adjusting entry on any Litman-Originated Matter, including the date, amount, source, client name, docket number, attorney code, and any associated narrative or memo field.
Demand No. 5. If NGM migrated some or all of its accounting from PCLaw to Soluno during or before the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023, the complete Soluno transaction journal in native exportable format covering the same period, including all migration logs, mapping tables between PCLaw and Soluno client and matter identifiers, and any reconciliation reports prepared in connection with the migration.
Demand No. 6. The native Master Spreadsheet (in .xlsx format) — and every prior version, draft, or iteration thereof — that contains the line entries for "July 2023," "August-September 15, 2023," and "September 16-30, 2023," together with all formulas, hidden tabs, hidden columns, named ranges, source-data references, and revision history (including but not limited to any Excel "Track Changes," version history maintained in OneDrive or SharePoint, or backup copies on any NGM workstation, server, or cloud storage account).
Demand No. 7. All internal communications — emails, text messages, instant messages, Teams or Slack messages, memoranda, notes, or any other form — among Joshua Goldberg, Lina Schweiss, Martha Long, MaryJane Harper, Howard Kline, Ilirian Durri, Heba Carter, any other NGM partner, member, employee, agent, bookkeeper, accountant, or attorney, or between any such person and any third party, concerning the timing, format, content, preparation, generation, delivery, omission, or non-production of Payment Allocation Reports for July 2023, August 2023, or September 2023, including any communications discussing why those months were not produced as standalone monthly Reports.
Demand No. 8. All communications between any NGM personnel and Richard C. Litman concerning Payment Allocation Reports, monthly accountings, or the twenty-percent fee allocation owed to Litman, during the period June 14, 2023 through December 31, 2023.
Demand No. 9. Any draft, preliminary, or work-in-progress versions of monthly Payment Allocation Reports for any of the Gap Months that may exist on any NGM computer, server, network share, cloud storage account, email mailbox (including the mailboxes of MaryJane Harper, Lina Schweiss, Martha Long, and Joshua Goldberg), backup tape, archive, or third-party system, regardless of whether such draft was ever finalized or delivered.
Demand No. 10. With respect to each month in the Audit Window for which NGM's file inventory contains a duplicate version bearing an "_1" suffix or an "updated" tag — including without limitation December 2023, February 2024, March 2024, August 2024, October 2024, November 2024, December 2024, February 2025, March 2025, and May 2025 — produce:
(a) the original version of the Payment Allocation Report, in native format with all metadata;
(b) the revised, updated, or "_1" version of the same Report, in native format with all metadata;
(c) any redline, comparison, or change-tracking document showing the differences between the original and the revised version;
(d) all communications discussing, requesting, authorizing, or transmitting the revision; and
(e) any audit trail, change log, or system record generated by PCLaw, Soluno, Excel, Adobe Acrobat, or any other software in connection with the revision.
Demand No. 11. A complete system-generated audit trail or report-generation log from PCLaw and/or Soluno reflecting every instance in which a "Payment Allocation by Client Report" (or any similarly captioned periodic accounting) was run, generated, exported, printed, or saved during the period June 14, 2023 through December 31, 2023, including the date and time of generation, the user who generated it, the parameters or filters applied, and the destination of the output.
Demand No. 12. The complete client-by-client breakdown that underlies each of the three Gap Month line entries in the Master Spreadsheet, identifying for each Litman-Originated Matter included in those entries:
(a) the client name; (b) the docket or matter number (and any alternate docket number, including any beginning with "1," "J," or "5"); (c) the date of each payment received during the Gap Months; (d) the amount of each payment; (e) whether the payment was deposited to trust or operating; (f) the date of any trust-to-operating transfer; (g) the "collected fees" portion attributable to that payment; (h) the "hard cost" and "soft cost" disbursements; and (i) the resulting twenty-percent (20%) allocation to Richard C. Litman.
Demand No. 13. All trust account statements, sub-account ledgers, and trust ledger reports maintained by NGM for any Litman-Originated Matter for the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023.
Demand No. 14. All operating account statements for NGM for the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023, showing all deposits from trust transfers and the source matter for each.
Demand No. 15. Any document — including any policy, memorandum, instruction, training material, email, or note — describing or memorializing NGM's standard process for generating monthly Payment Allocation by Client Reports, including who is responsible for running the report, what filters or parameters are applied, what review or approval is required before the report is finalized, and how the report is delivered to Richard C. Litman.
Demand No. 16. All documents reflecting any reconciliation, audit, or adjustment performed at any time on the Gap Month figures, including any after-the-fact correction, restatement, or true-up entry posted to PCLaw, Soluno, or the Master Spreadsheet.
Demand No. 17. All documents concerning the June 11, 2025 admission by Joshua Goldberg that payments received on Litman-originated matters were not being credited to Litman's twenty-percent share, including any internal investigation, remediation effort, list of affected clients or invoices, or recalculation of amounts owed for any month from July 2023 through the present.
Demand No. 18. For comparative purposes and as cross-reference to the Jul-Sep 2023 gap, all documents responsive to Demands Nos. 1 through 17 above, substituting the months of July 2025, August 2025, and September 2025 for July 2023, August 2023, and September 2023 — recognizing that the Jul-Sep 2025 gap (occurring after the elimination of plaintiff's email accounts on July 18, 2025) is the parallel bookend to the Jul-Sep 2023 gap and is the subject of plaintiff's separate spoliation analysis.
Pursuant to CPLR § 3130, Defendants are directed to answer each of the following interrogatories under oath, separately and fully, within thirty (30) days of service.
Interrogatory No. 1. State whether any Payment Allocation by Client Report was generated, drafted, prepared, or saved (whether or not delivered to plaintiff) for any of July 2023, August 2023, or September 2023. If yes, identify the date of generation, the person who generated it, the software used, the file name, the present location of the document, and whether and when it was delivered to plaintiff.
Interrogatory No. 2. Identify by name, title, and last known address every person who participated in the preparation, generation, review, approval, or delivery of monthly Payment Allocation Reports for any month from July 2023 through December 2023.
Interrogatory No. 3. Describe in detail the process by which NGM determined the figures appearing in the Master Spreadsheet line entries for "July 2023," "August-September 15, 2023," and "September 16-30, 2023," including the underlying source data, the filters and parameters applied, the person who entered the figures, and the date on which the figures were first entered into the Master Spreadsheet.
Interrogatory No. 4. Explain why the August-September 2023 period was reported as a combined "August-September 15, 2023" entry and a partial "September 16-30, 2023" entry rather than as two standalone monthly Reports for August 2023 and September 2023, respectively. State the reason for the mid-month split, identify the person who decided to report the period in this manner, and identify any other instance in NGM's history in which a Payment Allocation Report covered a partial-month or split-month period.
Interrogatory No. 5. State the date on which NGM first commenced producing standalone monthly Payment Allocation by Client Reports following the June 14, 2023 arbitration award, identify the first such Report by file name and date, and explain why standalone monthly Reports were not produced for the three months immediately preceding that date.
Interrogatory No. 6. For each month in the Audit Window for which NGM's file inventory contains a duplicate or "_1" version of a Payment Allocation Report, state (i) the date the original was generated; (ii) the date the revised version was generated; (iii) the person who requested or authorized the revision; (iv) the specific line items, figures, client allocations, or narrative content that changed between the original and the revised version; and (v) the reason for each change.
Interrogatory No. 7. Identify every billing or accounting software platform used by NGM at any time during the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023, including PCLaw and Soluno; state the dates on which each platform was in use; and describe any data migration between platforms occurring during or before that period.
Interrogatory No. 8. Identify every person within NGM, and every third-party vendor, accountant, bookkeeper, or consultant, who had access to PCLaw and/or Soluno during the period July 1, 2023 through September 30, 2023, together with the level of access (read, write, administrative) held by each.
Interrogatory No. 9. State whether NGM has ever performed, commissioned, or received any independent audit of its accounting for Litman-Originated Matters covering any portion of the period April 1, 2023 through the present. If yes, identify the auditor, the scope, the date, and produce the audit report. If no, state why not.
Interrogatory No. 10. Identify and describe every document — whether or not produced in response to the document demands above — known to Defendants or their counsel that bears upon the Gap Months and the figures attributed to those months in the Master Spreadsheet.
Interrogatory No. 11. State the present location, custodian, and preservation status of every responsive document identified in your answers to Interrogatories Nos. 1 through 10, and identify any document that has been lost, destroyed, deleted, overwritten, or otherwise rendered inaccessible.
Defendants are reminded of their continuing obligation under VOOM HD Holdings LLC v. EchoStar Satellite L.L.C., 93 A.D.3d 33 (1st Dep't 2012), and Pegasus Aviation I, Inc. v. Varig Logistica S.A., 26 N.Y.3d 543 (2015), to preserve all evidence — including ESI, billing system data, backup tapes, email mailboxes, cloud storage, and removable media — relevant to the matters set forth in this demand and in the underlying litigation. The duty to preserve extends to (a) all PCLaw and Soluno data covering the Audit Window; (b) all versions of the Master Spreadsheet; (c) all email mailboxes of NGM personnel involved in the preparation of Payment Allocation Reports, including but not limited to Joshua Goldberg, Lina Schweiss, Martha Long, MaryJane Harper, Howard Kline, Ilirian Durri, and Heba Carter; and (d) the eliminated mailboxes of litman@4patent.com and rlitman@nathlaw.com, which are also the subject of plaintiff's separate spoliation motion.
Plaintiff demands that Defendants produce all documents responsive to the foregoing demands, and serve sworn answers to the foregoing interrogatories, within thirty (30) days of service hereof. Production shall be made to the offices of plaintiff's counsel or by secure electronic transmission. ESI shall be produced in native format with metadata preserved.
Plaintiff reserves the right to serve additional or supplemental discovery as warranted by Defendants' responses, and reserves all rights and remedies under CPLR Article 31, including the right to move to compel and for sanctions in the event of non-compliance.
Dated: Brooklyn, New York April ___, 2026
Respectfully submitted,
____________________________________
[Counsel for Plaintiff]
Attorneys for Plaintiff
Richard C. Litman
TO: Aaron Gould, Esq. CONNELL FOLEY LLP Attorneys for Defendants Joshua B. Goldberg, Nath, Goldberg & Meyer, and Nath & Associates PLLC
Prepared April 6, 2026 in support of Litman v. Goldberg, Index No. 524343/2025. Cross-references: output/MONTHLY_ALLOCATION_REPORTS_AUDIT_JUL2023_JUN2025.md; output/JUL_SEP_2025_PAYMENT_GAP_MEMO.md; output/POST_MARCH_2023_ACCOUNTING_GAP.md.