A plaintiff who missed a court deadline must pay the opposing side's legal fees.

Record source: CourtListener

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY CENTRAL DIVISION LEXINGTON RICHARD WEYLAND, ) ) Plaintiff, ) Case No. 5:24-cv-00194-KKC ) v. ) OPINION & ORDER ) AMERICAN CRUISE LINES, INC., ) ) Defendant. ) *** *** *** *** This matter is before the Court on Defendant American Cruise Lines’ Application for Attorney Fees. [R. 45]. For the reasons that follow, the Court GRANTS the Defendant’s motions. I. Factual Background This case involves a wrongful termination claim by Plaintiff Richard Weyland against Defendant American Cruise Lines (“ACL”), his former employer.1 Weyland first filed his claim on July 25, 2024, bringing forth one count of constructive discharge in violation of the Kentucky Civil Rights Act, Ky. Rev. Stat. § 344.040. [R. 1 at 7]. In November of 2024, both ACL and a former co-defendant, Charles Robertson, filed responsive pleadings moving to dismiss Weyland’s claims. [R. 15; R. 18]. In a September 4, 2025, opinion, the Court granted Robertson’s motion but denied ACL’s. [R. 29]. ACL’s original motion to dismiss is key to the background of the present fee dispute. In that motion, ACL argued that Weyland’s suit fell outside of the applicable statute of limitations. [R. 15-1 at 6–7]. ACL asserts that they terminated Weyland’s employment on July 21, 2021. Weyland filed his lawsuit on July 25, 2024. The statute of limitations for a 1 The factual background of this case is well developed in the record, and the Court need not recite it again. [See R. 43 at 1–7]. KCRA claim is 3 years. Weyland argues that ACL did not fire him until July 25, 2021, or July 26, 2021. A single question overshadowed the entire case: Whether Weyland timely filed his claim. In the September 4, 2025, opinion, the Court acknowledged that the “parties are at an impasse incapable of resolution on a 12(b)(6) motion” and held that “the statute of limitations issue should be resolved before addressing American Cruise Lines’ additional arguments.” [R. 29 at 5]. The Court ordered limited discovery on the statute of limitations issues. [Id.] During discovery, ACL sent Weyland a series of interrogatories and requests for admission. The requests for admission asked Weyland to admit, among other things, that his last working day was July 16, 2021, and that he was verbally terminated on July 21, 2021. See [R. 43 at 3] (recounting admissions dispute). Per Fed. Civ. P. 36(a)(3), Weyland should have filed a response 30 days after he received electronic service on December 12, 2025. [Id. at 4]. Weyland filed no response to these requests for admission. ACL’s counsel acknowledged in a December 15, 2025, phone call that Weyland missed the deadline and would need to seek leave of court to extend the filing period. The parties then negotiated an agreed order to extend the time “to engage in limited discovery as to the statute of limitations’ applicability” through April 3, 2026, and gave the parties until May 4, 2026, to file a dispositive motion on the statute of limitations. [Id.] That agreed order did not mention the requests for admission, and it did not by its terms revive any elapsed time to respond to outstanding written discovery. On the final day of the extended discovery period, Weyland filed a new set of discovery responses. Relevant to the unanswered admissions request, Weyland denied ACL’s request for admission as to the date of termination, claiming instead that ACL fired him on July 27, 2021, citing to an AT&T call log procured through a third-party subpoena. [Id. at 4–5]. At the dispositive motion deadline, ACL timely moved for summary judgment. [See R. 33]. ACL’s motion relied on the unanswered admissions from December 2025, not the new admissions filed in April. Weyland responded by filing a Response brief opposing the summary judgment motion, a motion to withdraw any deemed admissions, and a motion for sanctions against ACL’s counsel. [R. 34; R. 35; R. 36]. ACL naturally opposed these new motions, arguing that no order extended the deadline for the expired admissions request and that Weyland’s own lack of diligence caused the procedural default. On July 9, 2026, the Court resolved these various motions. [R. 43]. The Court first addressed Weyland’s Motion to Withdraw, reasoning that If the deemed admission of RFA No. 2 stands, Weyland’s July 21, 2021, termination is conclusively established, the April 3 denial and the AT&T call log cannot create a dispute against a binding admission, and the limitations defense succeeds. If the admission is withdrawn, the denial becomes operative and the accrual date is open to proof. Whether a genuine dispute exists for summary-judgment purposes thus depends entirely on how the withdrawal question is resolved. The Court accordingly addresses the Motion to Withdraw first, the Motion for Summary Judgment second, and the Motion for Sanctions last. [Id. at 7–8]. The Court held that Weyland satisfied both prongs of the Sixth Circuit’s two- part test used to evaluate motions to withdraw: (1) permitting withdrawal would subserve the presentation of the merits, and (2) ACL failed to show that withdrawal would prejudice its case. [Id. at 10–12]. But the Court acknowledged that it owed ACL “a candid explanation about why it reaches this result, because ACL’s objection is fair.” [Id. at 13]. Several factors weighed against Weyland, including that his “responses were months late, his explanations are partial, RFA No. 2 lies outside the November 12 instruction he invokes, and he was told in plain terms on December 15 that the elapsed deadline required leave of court.” [Id.] The Court decided to balance Weyland’s procedural victory against these factors by requiring Weyland to compensate ACL for the time wasted in submitting its summary judgment motion. The text of the opinion is particularly relevant to the issue sub judice: The fact that the Weyland may litigate the accrual date does not mean he may do so for free. Withdrawal unwinds the consequence of Weyland’s own default, and it does so after ACL expended the effort of preparing a summary-judgment motion built upon an unanswered request for admission, as the Rule then allowed. A litigant who misses the deadline that creates an admission, and who is then relieved of that admission by the Court’s grace, is not entitled to a costless do-over. The court in South confronted this asymmetry and resolved it by granting withdrawal while requiring the late-responding party to bear the fees its opponent had reasonably incurred on the summary- judgment

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