Judge: D.C. discovery violation 'flagrant'.

• Position: E-DISCOVERY

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Royce Lamberth accused the city of Washington, D.C., and its attorneys of "repeated, flagrant, and unrepentant failures to comply with court orders" in their handling of discovery in a six-year class action lawsuit over the city's alleged failure to make special-education preschool programs accessible.

The trial was scheduled for April 6, but when the parties arrived, the plaintiffs' counsel told Lamberth that the city's attorneys planned to continue submitting emails on a "rolling" basis throughout the trial and beyond, according to The National Law Journal. The city's attorneys said new searches had revealed thousands of e-mails and that the city was too understaffed to review all of them before the case went to trial.

But the judge ordered the city to turn over all e-mails within a week of the trial's end on April 7, stating that it had waived its right to review the e-mails for privilege.

Because several post-trial motions are still pending, Lamberth has not yet ruled on the merits of the case. Those motions include one from the city to decertify the class and another for relief from Lamberth's previous ruling granting the class partial summary judgment, The National Law Journal said.

The case stems from allegations that city school officials violated the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) and other federal and local statutes...