After lawyers exceed status-letter limit by ‘whopping’ 70 pages, judge sees echoes of fictional Jarndyce case
Discovery
After lawyers exceed status-letter limit by ‘whopping’ 70 pages, judge sees echoes of fictional Jarndyce case
July 11, 2024, 10:36 am CDT
The handiwork of lawyers who crafted a joint 73-page monthly status letter won’t appear on the federal docket after a magistrate judge noted last week that it was a “whopping” 70 pages over the limit. (Image from Shutterstock)
The handiwork of lawyers who crafted a joint 73-page monthly status letter won’t appear on the federal docket after a magistrate judge noted last week that it was a “whopping” 70 pages over the limit.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang of the Southern District of New York ordered the letter to be removed from the docket, along with a filing that followed, Law360 reports.
The lengthy letter was filed amid discovery disputes in a lawsuit alleging that a Pakistani bank funded terrorism in Afghanistan.
The law firms representing the plaintiffs are Sparacino and Susman Godfrey, according to Law360. The firm representing the defendant Habib Bank is White & Case.
Wang told the parties at the last status conference “not to have the protracted letter-writing campaigns where you go back and forth arguing with each other,” she said in her July 1 order.
The warning was not heeded.
“It has become apparent that no amount of nudging or admonishing from the bench will curb these ‘letter-writing campaigns,’” Wang wrote in the order.
Wang said the parties must meet and confer in good faith to resolve their discovery disputes. If the parties still can’t reach agreement on their “myriad issues,” they must file a joint status letter limited to five, single-spaced pages. That page limit applies to future status letters, as well.
Wang also said she will “very likely” apportion or grant costs in rulings on future motions to compel discovery or to grant protective orders. She pointed to a civil procedural rule authorizing imposition of attorney fees when motions are not made in good faith or when objections are not substantially justified.
Wang saw parallels to the long-running contested-will case in the 1852 novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
“Discovery in this litigation is at risk of devolving into a modern-day Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, as it has ‘become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means.’ and ‘no two … lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises,’” Wang wrote.
The case is King v. Habib Bank Limited.
