In Minella v. Electron Microscopy Scis., No. 21-15906 (ZNQ) (RLS) (D.N.J. Sept. 3, 2025), New Jersey Magistrate Judge Rukhsanah L. Singh denied Plaintiff’s Motion to Bar the Corrected Spreadsheet submitted by Defendants after Plaintiff submitted his expert report to Defendants (which was based on the original spreadsheet), finding “Defendants were substantially justified in their untimely supplementation, the harm or prejudice to Plaintiff can be cured, the balance of the relevant factors weigh against precluding the use of the Corrected Spreadsheet, and the Court’s and parties’ interests are better served through the presentation of accurate information”.

Case Discussion and Judge’s Ruling

In this case, Plaintiff alleged fraud, conversion, breach of contract and other allegations stemming from a dispute over a drop in commissions paid that led to the termination of Plaintiff. In response to a Plaintiff request, Defendants electronically searched their invoices and, on September 14, 2023, produced an Excel spreadsheet that purported to provide the details of all invoices for Plaintiff’s territories from 2015 through 2020 (the “Original Spreadsheet”), which contained 276,554 entries. Defendants subsequently also produced 12 boxes of information relating to the sales made in the relevant time period.

Fact discovery ended on October 1, 2024, and the parties began expert discovery. To facilitate his experts’ analysis, Plaintiff provided the Original Spreadsheet to his experts, who relied upon it to calculate the amount of commission Defendants allegedly owed to Plaintiff. On October 17, 2024, Plaintiff produced his expert report to Defendants. While preparing to depose Plaintiff’s expert, Defendants discovered that the Original Spreadsheet was overinclusive, containing 1,068 entries—of the 276,554 total—that involved invoices outside of Plaintiff’s territories or for products not sold by Defendants.

After Defendant reported the error, Plaintiff’s counsel responded that he would not issue a new expert report based on a corrected spreadsheet because doing so would be “unduly burdensome and prejudicial” to Plaintiff. Still, Defendants produced what they purported to be a corrected version of the Original Spreadsheet (“the Corrected Spreadsheet”), with 1,069 entries removed (.004% of the total entries from the Original Spreadsheet), which led to Plaintiff’s motion.

Noting that Plaintiff “does not identify any of the removed entries in the spreadsheet that he claims should have remained”, Judge Singh stated: “Thus, the fundamental issue here is whether Defendants’ supplementation with the Corrected Spreadsheet was made ‘in a timely manner.’”

While Judge Singh ruled: “Because Defendants could have discovered the errors before expert discovery began, the Court finds that the supplementation was not timely made here”, she also noted: “considering the complexity of the nature of the businesses as well as the numerosity of invoices that had been filtered to create the Original Spreadsheet, the confusion is understandable…it is reasonable that Defendants’ closer analysis of the spreadsheet first arose in preparing for the expert’s deposition. Under these circumstances, the Court finds that, while Defendants could have been more diligent sooner, the confusion within the Original Spreadsheet is objectively reasonable. As such, Defendants’ failure to timely supplement their discovery with the Corrected Spreadsheet in this instance is substantially justified.”

Judge Singh also added: “Having found the failure to timely supplement to be substantially justified, the exclusion of the Corrected Spreadsheet is not warranted. As such, while the Court need not consider whether the failure is harmless under the various applicable factors, those factors weigh against exclusion of the Corrected Spreadsheet.”

Those factors included:

• Surprise to Plaintiff: “through fact discovery, Plaintiff had the opportunity to review the invoices that formed the Original Spreadsheet and could have verified its contents as well. Moreover, Plaintiff did not depose the individual who created the Original Spreadsheet, even after being provided the identity and even after Kirsch testified to not having knowledge as to the spreadsheet.”
• Prejudice to Plaintiff: While agreeing that “Plaintiff is prejudiced by the late production of the Corrected Spreadsheet”, Judge Singh stated: “The extent of prejudice, however, is unclear as Plaintiff does not detail the cost, time, or efforts associated with the preparation and service of any amended expert report based on the Corrected Spreadsheet, nor does Plaintiff clarify if he would choose to do so in the event the Court were to deny his Motion.”
• Ability to Cure the Prejudice: “Here, any prejudice to Plaintiff can be addressed by permitting Plaintiff leave to produce an amended, supplemental, or revised expert report to address the Corrected Spreadsheet. As noted above, the changes between the Original Spreadsheet and the Corrected Spreadsheet are not voluminous and Defendants have provided Plaintiff with a spreadsheet of the removed items. Thus, a review of the changes may not be a significant undertaking.”
• Disruption to Expert Discovery: “expert discovery has not closed and if, in fact, the entries removed from the Original Spreadsheet truly should not be included as part of the relevant sales, then resolution of the merits of this matter going forward would be better served through the presentation of accurate and reliable information.”

In denying the motion (and Plaintiff’s request for sanctions against Defendants), Judge Singh also stated: “there is no indication that Defendants’ untimely supplementation through the production of the Corrected Spreadsheet was done in bad faith or willfully.”

So, what do you think? Should the Court have allowed Defendants to correct the spreadsheet so late? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Case opinion link courtesy of Minerva26, an Affinity partner of eDiscovery Today.

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