IceMOS Technology Corp. v. Omron Corp.

          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 ...