Discovery
After attorneys exceed status-letter restrict by ‘whopping’ 70 pages, decide sees echoes of fictional Jarndyce case
The handiwork of attorneys who crafted a joint 73-page month-to-month standing letter gained’t seem on the federal docket after a Justice of the Peace decide famous final week that it was a “whopping” 70 pages over the restrict. (Picture from Shutterstock)
The handiwork of attorneys who crafted a joint 73-page month-to-month standing letter gained’t seem on the federal docket after a Justice of the Peace decide famous final week that it was a “whopping” 70 pages over the restrict.
U.S. Justice of the Peace Decide Ona T. Wang of the Southern District of New York ordered the letter to be faraway from the docket, together with a submitting that adopted, Law360 reviews.
The prolonged letter was filed amid discovery disputes in a lawsuit alleging {that a} Pakistani financial institution funded terrorism in Afghanistan.
The legislation corporations representing the plaintiffs are Sparacino and Susman Godfrey, in response to Law360. The agency representing the defendant Habib Financial institution is White & Case.
Wang informed the events on the final standing convention “to not have the protracted letter-writing campaigns the place you commute arguing with one another,” she mentioned in her July 1 order.
The warning was not heeded.
“It has develop into obvious that no quantity of nudging or admonishing from the bench will curb these ‘letter-writing campaigns,’” Wang wrote within the order.
Wang mentioned the events should meet and confer in good religion to resolve their discovery disputes. If the events nonetheless can’t attain settlement on their “myriad points,” they have to file a joint standing letter restricted to 5, single-spaced pages. That web page restrict applies to future standing letters, as effectively.
Wang additionally mentioned she’s going to “very seemingly” apportion or grant prices in rulings on future motions to compel discovery or to grant protecting orders. She pointed to a civil procedural rule authorizing imposition of lawyer charges when motions usually are not made in good religion or when objections usually are not considerably justified.
Wang noticed parallels to the long-running contested-will case within the 1852 novel Bleak Home by Charles Dickens.
“Discovery on this litigation is liable to devolving right into a modern-day Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, because it has ‘develop into so sophisticated, that no man alive is aware of what it means.’ and ‘no two … attorneys can speak about it for 5 minutes with out coming to a complete disagreement as to all of the premises,’” Wang wrote.
The case is King v. Habib Financial institution Restricted.
