VIA ECF and HAND DELIVERY

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1 Attorneys at Law 142 West 57th Street, Suite 4A New York, New York Main No: (212) Direct Dial: June 20, 2016 VIA ECF and HAND DELIVERY Hon. Eileen Bransten New York State Supreme Court New York County, Part 3 60 Center Street, Room 521 New York, New York Dear Justice Bransten: Re: Shenzhen Kehuaxing Industrial Ltd., et al. v. Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, et al., Index No /2015 I am a member of Kaplan Rice LLP, counsel for defendants Curtis, Mallet Prevost, Colt & Mosie LLP ("Cmiis"), DanielL. Porter, Esq., and Ross Bidlingmaier, Esq. (collectively, the "Defendants") in the above-captioned action. I write to request a conference regarding Plaintiffs' ongoing efforts to hinder discovery and repeated refusal to comply with their most basic discovery obligations. First, Plaintiffs have not produced a single document in this case. Defendants served their first set of document requests and interrogatories on Plaintiffs on November 12, Pursuant to CPLR 3122 and 3133, Plaintiffs had twenty days to respond. When that deadline passed with no response of any kind, I notified Plaintiffs' counsel, Dean Cho, on December 22, 2015 that Plaintiffs had defaulted on Defendants' requests and demanded production of responsive documents and sworn responses to the interrogatories. Additional correspondence with Mr. Cho made it clear that Plaintiffs had no intention of responding to these requests in a timely manner. Thus, we arranged for a preliminary conference with the Court on March 1 and set a discovery schedule. The discovery schedule required that all responses to initial discovery requests be served no later than May 6, At the time of the conference, Mr. Cho represented to me that his clients' documents were on a boat from China and Vietnam. Plaintiffs served their responses on the final day to do so under the Preliminary Conference Order-May 6, 2016-nearly six months after receiving Defendants' requests. 1 Plaintiffs did not, however, produce any documents in conjunction with their responses. 1 Plaintiffs' untimely responses include objections that they have waived. See, e.g., All Bora Psychological Servs., P.C. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 39 Misc. 3d 9, 10, 962 N.Y.S.2d 844, 844 (Sup. Ct. App. T. 2d Dep't 2013) ("Plaintiff was required, but failed, to challenge the propriety of defendant's discovery demands pursuant to CPLR 3120 within the time prescribed by CPLR 3122."); Aviles v. State, 13 Misc. 3d 1237(A), 831 N.Y.S.2d 351, 351 (Ct. Cl. 2006) (concluding that the party erred in "simply noting in a letter that 'some' of the interrogatories were objectionable and not responding to any of them, rather than properly responding to the non-objectionable ones within 20 days after service and stating the objection(s) to the others 'with reasonable particularity"'). 1 of 5

2 On May 17, Mr. Cho stated that there were five boxes of Plaintiffs' documents that could be viewed in his office. I promptly contacted my clients to arrange a convenient date for review and ed Mr. Cho asking him to call me to set the appointment. In reality, Mr. Cho still had not received any of Plaintiffs' documents. It was not until June 3 that Mr. Cho stated that the documents would be arriving in his office the following week-three months after asserting the documents were en route at the preliminary conference. Plaintiffs finally made some documents available to Defendants for inspection for the first time on June 10, Those documents consisted of five large boxes filled to capacity with Chinese and Vietnamese records. Images of the boxes and representative documents from the boxes are included below. At this time, Defendants have no idea what these boxes contain or whether, as it appears, Plaintiffs have simply dumped everything in boxes to force Defendants to bear the costs of translation and copying (which would be substantial). Defendants can discern, however, that the boxes do not contain the following critical categories of requested documents: 1) customs documents demonstrating, for example, the antidumping duties actually paid by Plaintiffs on imported stainless steel sinks; 2) s, including the s annexed to Plaintiffs' Amended Complaint; 3) documents from Plaintiff Artisan Manufacturing Corporation, which is 2 of 5

3 located in New Jersey (and, accordingly, should have s and documents which are in English); and 4) the licensing agreement with Electrolux or any documents relating to that agreement (which Plaintiffs specifically reference in their complaint). Defendants have repeatedly asked Mr. Cho when they will receive these essential documents, as well as scans and translations of the few potentially responsive documents Defendants identified in the five boxes in Mr. Cho's possession. Mr. Cho has refused to provide a timeline for these productions and has asserted that the burden of paying for the Bates stamping, scanning and translation costs should be shifted to and borne exclusively by Defendants. Contra US. Bank Nat'! Ass 'n v. GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, Inc., 94 A.D.3d 58, 63, 939 N.Y.S.2d 395, 399 (1st Dep't 2012) (adopting the Zubulake standard for allocating costs in discovery which requires "the producing party to bear the initial cost of searching for, retrieving and producing discovery"). To make matters worse, Mr. Cho has informed Defendants that he has not fully complied with the document requests and that more documents are in the process of being assembled for production. This is extraordinary given that Plaintiffs filed their Summons with Notice in this case on December 31, Plaintiffs also have not properly answered any of the Defendants' intenogatory requests. Instead, Plaintiffs provided an identical and general response to each: "see Plaintiffs' document production and the exhibits annexed to Plaintiff's [sic] complaint." This response is especially disingenuous given that Plaintiffs refuse to translate or scan documents and, in any event, have not identified the specific documents that are responsive to the intenogatory responses. When I specifically informed Mr. Cho that blanket responses are objectionable, 2 and even produced to Mr. Cho a case supporting this well-established legal proposition, Mr. Cho refused to revise his interrogatory responses. Thus, Plaintiffs' intenogatory responses are completely meaningless at this juncture. 3 Finally, at our preliminary conference in March, Mr. Cho represented to me that it violated Chinese law to depose a Chinese national in China and in the United States. He then said that in similar instances he has produced deponents in Hong Kong. At the time, I had no reason to doubt Mr. Cho's representation and agreed to his inclusion on the PC order that the depositions of Plaintiffs "may occur in Hong Kong or New York." [Docket No. 078]. Since the preliminary conference, I have asked Mr. Cho to provide me with the legal authorities demonstrating that Chinese Nationals cannot be deposed in China or the U.S. Mr. Cho has refused to provide me with this information. Accordingly, Defendants have had to perform their own research which demonstrates that Mr. Cho's representation to me was incorrect-chinese nationals can be deposed in the United States and, as Plaintiffs, it is their 2 Blessin v. Greenberg, 89 A.D.2d 862, 863, 453 N.Y.S.2d 249, 250 (2d Dep't 1982) (holding that responses to interrogatories cannot be "totally nonresponsive or conclusory and general in nature" because "[s]uch responses do not satisfy the purpose of interrogatories, which is to obtain evidence"). 3 The interrogatory responses are defective because Mr. Cho verified the responses. Because interrogatory responses are deemed to be evidence, a corporate party is required to serve "answers in writing to the interrogatories under oath 'by any officer, director, agent or employee having the information'" pursuant to CPLR 3133(b) "and not by its attorney." Lubell v. Work Wear Corp., 82 Misc. 2d 1000, 1002, 371 N.Y.S.2d 341, 342 (N.Y. Civ. Ct. Queens Cnty. 1975). 3 of 5

4 obligation to be available for deposition in the jurisdiction in which they have chosen to bring suit. See, e.g., Yu Hui Chen v. Chen Li Zhi, 81 A.D.3d 818, 819, 916 N.Y.S.2d 525,525 (2d Dep't 2011) (directing deposition of a Chinese national); Farrakhan v. N YP. Holdings, 226 A.D.2d 133, ,640 N.Y.S.2d 80, 81 (1st Dep't 1996) ("[A] non-resident plaintiff who has invoked the jurisdiction of New York State by bringing suit in its courts must stand ready to be deposed in New York unless it is shown that undue hardship would result."). Apparently because there is no authority for the position he has taken, Mr. Cho now is saying that he will not be producing the individual Plaintiffs for depositions in New York because they are elderly and unwell additional time is required to obtain visas for them. He has provided no proof of any plaintiffs medical condition and, further, can provide no explanation why visa applications were not filed at the commencement of this case over 18 months ago. Nevertheless, Mr. Cho continues to suggest that the individual Plaintiffs be deposed in Hong Kong. 4 While Defendants are willing to consider this alternative, Plaintiffs should be ordered to pay all associated costs, including travel, venue and translation costs for this accommodation. See, e.g., Gartner v. Unified Windows, Doors & Sliding, Inc., 68 A.D.3d 815,816,890 N.Y.S.2d 608, 610 (2d Dep't 2009) (proposing that defendant's New York counsel be flown to Colombia "with the travel costs and cost of translation to be borne by the plaintiffs" where the deponents could not leave Colombia for a deposition in New York); Doherty v. New York, 24 A.D.3d 275, 276, 808 N.Y.S.2d 625, 626 (1st Dep't 2005) (holding that plaintiff residing in Ireland had "to bear the costs of defendant's travel-related expenses" for his deposition abroad). Defendants have noticed seven depositions of Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs' representatives, as well as the deposition of non-party Electrolux. The failures delineated in this letter are effectively, and we believe deliberately, impeding the taking of those depositions. Prompt resolution of these issues is pmiicularly important because fact discovery in this case ends October 15,2016, and without production ofthe necessary supporting documents by Plaintiffs, Defendants cannot take the depositions they have noticed. I have made every attempt to resolve these issues with Mr. Cho and move this case forward but my efforts to meet and confer have been futile. It is clear that Plaintiffs intend to either substantially delay or completely avoid engaging in discovery and I ask that the Court schedule a conference during which we can address Plaintiffs' dilatory tactics. In lieu of a motion, Defendants respectfully request that the Court direct Plaintiffs to: 1) scan, Bates stamp, and provide translations for all responsive documents in their possession, custody or control within thirty days; 2) serve substantive sworn responses to Defendants' interrogatories within thirty days; and 3) produce the individual Plaintiffs for depositions in New York, or require Plaintiffs to bear the costs of holding their depositions in Hong Kong. 4 Mr. Cho has also suggested that the depositions be conducted by video conference but that option is not feasible given the difficulties associated with translation of the Plaintiffs' testimony and documents. 4 of 5

5 Defendants are prepared to submit a motion to compel responses to the Discovery Requests if the Court would prefer that the issue be fully briefed prior to a conference. Respectfully submitted, Michelle Rice cc: Dean T. Cho, Esq. Law Offices of Dean T. Cho, LLC 233 Broadway, Suite 2200 New York, New York of 5