Plaintiff may ask subway bigs: "What did you know, and when did you know it?"

In a suit stemming from a fatal train accident, in which defendant's liability is premised on allegations that defendant knew of overcrowding on the subway platform and made the condition worse by undertaking a construction project, the First Department gave plaintiff leave to take additonal depositons, in Alexopoulos v. MTA, decided on February 13, 2007. Through discovery, plaintiff had memoranda written by subway safety chiefs, and the court said plaintiff has the right to depose them. The court noted that plaintiff had "made a 'detailed showing' of the necessity for taking additional depositions, in that she demonstrated that the employees already deposed had insufficient information and there was a substantial likelihood that those sought to be deposed possess information necessary and material to the prosecution of the case."