United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
JAMES
A. TEILBORG SENIOR UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
On May
10, 2019, the Court issued the following Order:
Pending
before the Court is a motion to seal. (Doc. 176). It fails to
comply with the protective order and will be denied as such.
(Doc. 87 at 6-7).[1]
Moreover,
the Court has reviewed the lodged document, and it is a
discovery dispute filed without leave of Court. (See
Doc. 35 at 4). Thus, it is procedurally improper.
Finally,
the lodged document is untimely. Fact discovery closed in
this case on February 22, 2019. (Doc. 101). The Rule 16
scheduling order states,
As set forth in the Order Setting Rule 16 Scheduling
Conference, the Court will not entertain discovery disputes
after the close of discovery barring extraordinary
circumstances. Therefore, the parties shall complete all
discovery by the deadline set forth in this Order (complete
being defined as including the time to propound discovery,
the time to answer all propounded discovery, the time for the
Court to resolve all discovery disputes, and the time to
complete any final discovery necessitated by the Court's
ruling on any discovery disputes). Thus, “last
minute” or “eleventh hour” discovery which
results in insufficient time to undertake additional
discovery and which requires an extension of the discovery
deadline will be met with disfavor, and may result in denial
of an extension, exclusion of evidence, or the imposition of
other sanctions.
(Doc. 35 at 2 n. 2). The underlying motion was filed May 10,
2019, approximately 12 weeks after the close of fact
discovery, and is, thus, untimely.[2]
Based on the foregoing,
IT IS ORDERED that the motion to seal (Doc.
176) is denied as procedurally improper. The Clerk of the
Court shall leave Doc. 177 lodged, under seal.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Court will
not entertain the arguments in Doc. 177 for the reasons
stated herein.
(Doc.
179) (footnotes in original).
Plaintiff
has moved to reconsider this Order. Plaintiff makes several
unpersuasive arguments.
First,
Plaintiff claims that this Court has misinterpreted its own
scheduling Order (quoted above). Of course, the Court knows
what it meant by the scheduling order and explained it to the
parties at the Rule16 conference. Specifically, the Court
stated,
The next deadline which would follow … would be the
discovery cutoff. That's the date after which no new
discovery can be initiated. Almost as obvious is that is the
date by which the party, the responding party will have
enough time to ...