In this Scaffold Law personal-injury action, defendant New York University moves under CPLR 3126 to strike the answer of plaintiff, Alex Mendez, or alternatively to compel plaintiff to provide responses to NYU's discovery demands. The motion is granted in part and denied in part.

1. As an initial matter, this court finds unpersuasive plaintiffs' argument that the motion should be denied due to NYU's (asserted) failure to confer in good faith and the omission of a word-count certification. The good-faith affirmation of NYU's counsel establishes both repeated written attempts to obtain the discovery at issue and an attempt to confer with plaintiff's counsel [*2]by phone. (See NYSCEF no. 67 at ¶¶ 6-11.) No more is required. The court exercises its discretion under CPLR 2001 to disregard the absence of a word-count certification in NYU's opening papers as a non-prejudicial defect. (See Anuchina v Marine Transport Logistics, Inc., 216 AD3d 1126, 1127 [2d Dept 2023] [holding that the motion court erred in declining to disregard under CPLR 2001 the absence of a word-count certification in plaintiff's motion papers].)

2. Plaintiff also argues that the motion has been rendered moot by plaintiff's service of responses to NYU's combined discovery demands on the same day plaintiff filed his opposition papers. (See NYSCEF No. 86 at ¶ 21.) This court disagrees. NYU's reply identifies several putative deficiencies in plaintiff's bill of particulars and combined-demand responses. (See NYSCEF No. 89 at 4-6, 7-8.) The motion remains live with respect to those claimed deficiencies.

The court agrees with plaintiff that he has sufficiently responded at this time to the demand for Medicare/Medicaid authorizations, and that plaintiff need not supplement this response. With respect to NYU's demands for pharmacy and primary-care physician records, those demands are not limited in time or in scope, to ensure that they seek only medical information relevant to the claims and defenses in this action. (See NYSCEF No. 72 at 20, 32 [combined demands].) These demands are therefore overbroad as currently framed and need not be responded to. This determination is without prejudice to NYU's serving revised, more targeted versions of these demands.

Plaintiff must provide social-media information/authorizations in the categories demanded by NYU (see id. at 29), but limited to the period from three months before the accident to the present. Given plaintiff's representation in his bill of particulars that he is seeking lost wages (see NYSCEF No. 86 at ¶ 24), plaintiff must also provide the W-2s demanded by NYU (see NYSCEF No. 72 at 36). Plaintiff need not provide tax returns/authorizations at this time. This determination is without prejudice to renewal of the demand for tax returns on a more particularized showing of need for those documents.

Plaintiff must supplement ¶ 2 of his bill of particulars to more specifically identify the location of the accident—saying only that the accident occurred on the fifth floor of a large building is not enough. (See NYSCEF No. 86 at 1.) And plaintiff must also supplement ¶ 43 of his bill of particulars to identify the condition that led to plaintiff's fall from a height (as indicated in ¶ 3 of the bill, see id. at 2).

3. Finally, although this court has sustained several of plaintiff's objections to NYU's combined discovery demands, plaintiff has not attempted to explain why it took so long for him to serve responses and objections to those demands. Given that plaintiff did not serve responses until his briefing deadline on NYU's discovery motion—a year after those demands were served—this court concludes that plaintiff must pay NYU a $500 discovery sanction to offset some of NYU's costs in making that motion.

Accordingly, it is

ORDERED that the branch of NYU's motion seeking under CPLR 3124 to compel plaintiff to supplement his discovery responses and bill of particulars is granted in part and denied in part as set forth above, and plaintiff must serve his supplemental responses and BP within 30 days of entry of this order; and it is further

ORDERED that the branch of NYU's motion seeking discovery sanctions under CPLR 3126 is granted only to the extent that plaintiff must within 14 days of entry pay NYU $500, and is otherwise denied.