Wilshire Insurance Company v. Yager et al

Filing 101

ORDER; RE: motion for summary judgment, joinder, motion to strike.. Signed by Judge James A Soto on 8/31/17.(JAS, kr)

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

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FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

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Wilshire Insurance Company,
Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant,

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ORDER

v.

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No. CV-16-00192-TUC-JAS

Patrick Yager, et al.,

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Defendants/CounterPlaintiffs.

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The Court has reviewed the entire record in this case (Docs. 1 to 100) and all of
the briefing associated with the filing of the early summary judgment motion. The
summary judgment motion was filed on April 5, 2017, which was many months before
the expiration of the discovery deadline. See Docs. 39, 47.

As it currently stands, all

discovery is not scheduled to be completed until December 19, 2017. In addition, this
deadline could be extended one or more times as discovery of new information often
leads to issues that need to be further explored through additional discovery that was not
initially contemplated by the parties.

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The Court finds that the issues related to summary judgment potentially implicate

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numerous fact-intensive issues, and that the summary judgment motions (Docs. 47 and

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Doc. 871) are premature and unwarranted at this time, and run afoul of this Court’s

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Doc. 87 is Girard Insurance Service’s joinder as to summary judgment.

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contemplated course for proceeding with the litigation in this case as reflected in this
Court’s Orders. See Doc. 6 (4/21/16 Order at p. 2, line 5 to p. 3, line 14; noting that only

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one summary judgment motion should be filed after the completion of all discovery and
that early summary judgment motions would likely be denied without prejudice until
after the completion of discovery); Doc. 19 (9/23/16 Order at p. 2, line 9 to p. 3, line

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16)(same). The motion for summary judgment (Doc. 47) (and the joinder thereto-Doc.
87) are denied without prejudice. As summary judgment has been denied, the motion to
strike filed by Counterclaimants (“Yager”) is denied as moot.
The Court will not consider, and the parties shall not file, any summary judgment
motions until at least 30 days after the final discovery deadline has expired in this case.2

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Although the motion to strike was denied as moot, the Court notes that a reply
statement of facts is not permitted by the Local Rules and that reply statement of facts are
often disregarded or striken as improper. As such, in the future, only after discovery has
been completed, the parties should strive to carefully review all pertinent discovery in the
case and submit all necessary facts in only one statement of facts showing either that no
material issues of fact exist, such that summary judgment is proper, or showing that
material issues of fact exist, such that summary judgment is improper. In addition, the
parties should be diligent in making sure that they are only submitting facts that are
properly admissible for consideration at the summary judgment stage in this specific
litigation. The Court notes that early summary judgment motions often spawn
unnecessary satellite litigation, including issues related to discovery and lengthy time
delays in the case, incomplete (or excessively long) statement of facts (as discovery is
ongoing, incomplete, and many potentially relevant facts have not been discovered),
verbose and excessively long briefs exceeding standardized page limits, reply statement
of facts, numerous objections to submitted evidence, motions to strike, objections to
joinders in summary judgment, and the numerous responses and replies thereto. Lastly,
despite the extension of page limits, the Court also notes that certain briefs and filings
appear not to actually fall in those page limits (extended or otherwise) as they do not
comply with the Local Rules, and such non-complaint filings could be disregarded or
stricken in the future as an attempt to subvert the Local Rules which encourage the
parties to be concise in their arguments. See LRCiv 7.1(b)(1)(“The body of all
documents shall be typed, double-spaced and shall not exceed 28 lines per page; they
shall not be single-spaced . . . All pleadings, motions and other original documents filed
with the Clerk shall be in a fixed-pitch type size no smaller than . . . 10 letters per inch . .
. or in a proportional font size no smaller than 13 point, including any footnotes. Pages
of the document must be numbered. The left margin shall not be less than 1 ½ inches and
the right margin shall not be less than ½ inch.)(emphasis added); LRCiv 7.2(e)(page
limits). Future requests for extensions of page limits will likely be denied; as such, the
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Lastly, the record reflects that all parties would benefit from a settlement
conference.

If any party thinks that a settlement conference could be fruitful, a

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stipulation or request for such a conference may be filed, which will likely be granted.
The Court can refer the case to a United States Magistrate Judge for a settlement
conference at no cost to the parties, and the Court will stay all deadlines pending the

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completion of the settlement conference.
Dated this 31st day of August, 2017.

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parties should be concise in their arguments and plan to comply with the Local Rules as
to both page limits and other necessary requirements (i.e., font size, etc.).
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