United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
Dominic W. Lanza United States District Judge
Pending
before the Court is the parties' joint motion to amend
the scheduling order. (Doc. 79.) For the reasons set forth
below, the motion will be granted in part and denied in part.
BACKGROUND
The
complaint in this case was filed in December 2017. (Doc. 1.)
In their Rule 26(f) report, the parties asked the Court to
set a discovery deadline of November 2, 2018, and a
dispositive motion deadline of March 29, 2019. (Doc. 50.) The
Court accepted this proposal in significant part and issued a
Case Management Order that set a discovery deadline of
November 1, 2018. (Doc. 56.) The Case Management Order also
set August 1, 2018, as the deadline for amending the
pleadings and December 2, 2018, as the dispositive motion
deadline. (Doc. 56.) Finally, the Case Management Order
included the following cautionary note: “The
Deadlines Are Real. The parties are advised that the
Court intends to enforce the deadlines set forth in this
order, and they should plan their litigation activities
accordingly.” (Doc. 56 at 5, emphasis in original.)
In
early August 2018, a new law firm, Tiffany & Bosco, made
an appearance on behalf of one defendant. (Doc. 63.) Tiffany
& Bosco then appeared on behalf of the other four
defendants in mid-September 2018. (Doc. 73).
ANALYSIS
The
instant motion (Doc. 79) was filed on the eve of the
discovery deadline. It asks the Court to extend the deadline
for amending the pleadings until November 30, 2018, to extend
the discovery deadline until March 2, 2019, and to extend the
dispositive motion deadline until May 3, 2019. In support of
this request, the parties contend (1) “[t]he discovery
process in general has taken longer than expected” due
to Plaintiff's difficulty in obtaining her own medical
records and due to the “tedious” process of
reviewing the 50, 000 or so pages of discovery, and (2)
“Defendants have recently retained new counsel . . .
who need time to get up to speed on the litigation.”
(Doc. 79 at 2.)
These
explanations do not strike the Court as the sort of
“good cause” required to modify a scheduling
order. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b)(4) (“A
schedule may be modified only for good cause and with the
judge's consent.”). “Rule 16(b)'s
‘good cause' standard primarily considers the
diligence of the party seeking the amendment. . . .
[C]arelessness is not compatible with a finding of diligence
and offers no reason for a grant of relief. . . . [T]he focus
of the inquiry is upon the moving party's reasons for
seeking modification. If that party was not diligent, the
inquiry should end.” Johnson v. Mammoth
Recreations, Inc., 975 F.2d 604, 609 (9th Cir. 1992).
Here, the parties were specifically advised in the Case
Management Order that “The Deadlines Are Real.”
It was their responsibility to budget enough time to review
discovery as it was being produced, even if the volume of
discovery material was relatively high, and to issue
follow-up discovery demands with an eye toward complying with
the November 1, 2018 discovery cut-off date.
Nor is
the Court convinced that the retention of “new”
defense counsel constitutes good cause to amend the
scheduling order. The docket reflects that “new”
counsel made their first appearance in this case nearly three
months ago. Cf. Johns v. AutoNation USA Corp., 246
F.R.D. 608, 610 (D. Ariz. 2006) (“Defendants' only
attempt to explain the delay in seeking to amend their answer
is that they retained new counsel . . . . But Defendants
waited four months after the substitution of counsel to
request leave to amend. . . . [T]he four month delay after
new counsel was obtained shows Defendants were not
diligent.”).
It is
also notable that the joint motion doesn't even attempt
to explain why the deadline for amending the pleadings-which
expired three months ago-should be reset for a month from
now.
For all
of these reasons, the Court strongly considered issuing an
across-the-board denial of the joint motion to amend.
Nevertheless, recognizing that such a result would be harsh
(and that the case was recently transferred between judges),
the Court will agree to grant some of the relief requested by
the parties. Specifically, although the Court will deny the
request to extend the deadline for amending the pleadings, it
will agree to extend the discovery deadline by two months (to
January 4, 2019) and to reset the dispositive motion deadline
for one month after the close of discovery (to February 8,
2019). The parties are reminded, once again, that “The
Deadlines Are Real.”
Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that the joint motion to amend
the scheduling order (Doc 79) is GRANT ...