Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital, Inc. v. Yelp! Inc.

Filing 93

Brief re 86 Supplemental MOTION to Appoint Lead Plaintiff and Lead Counsel and Proposed Six-Month Discovery Plan Supplimental Statement by The Weston Firm RE: Appointment of Interim Lead Counsel filed byCalifornia Furnishings, Inc., Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital, Inc., Wag My Tail, Inc.. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Proposed Order Consolidating Cases and Appointing Weston Firm and Ongaro Burtt Interim Lead Counsel)(Related document(s) 86 ) (Weston, Gregory) (Filed on 8/16/2010)

Exhibit A

Pages 1 - 26 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE HONORABLE MARILYN HALL PATEL

) ) Plaintiff, ) ) VS. ) ) YELP! INC., ) ) Defendant. ) ___________________________________) ) CATS AND DOGS ANIMAL HOSPITAL, ) INC., et al., ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) VS. ) ) YELP! INC., ) ) Defendant. ) ___________________________________)

BORIS LEVITT,

No. C 10-1321 MHP

No. C 10-2351 MHP San Francisco, California Monday July 19, 2010

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS APPEARANCES: For Plaintiff Levitt: BY: ONGARO BURTT 595 Market Street, Suite 610 San Francisco, California 94105 DAVID R. ONGARO, ESQUIRE AMELIA D. WINCHESTER, ESQUIRE

(Appearances continued on next page) Reported By: CSR #5812, Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR #5812, RPR, CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR, RPR,CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court [phone]

APPEARANCES (CONTINUED): For Plaintiffs Cats and Dogs, et al.: BY: BECK & LEE 28 West Flagler Street, Suite 555 Miami, Florida 33130 ELIZABETH LEE BECK, ESQUIRE JARED H. BECK, ESQUIRE THE WESTON FIRM 2811 Sykes Court Santa Clara, California 95051 JACK FITZGERALD, ESQUIRE Cooley Godward 101 California Street, 5th Floor San Francisco, California 94111-5800 MATTHEW D. BROWN, ESQUIRE BENJAMIN H. KLEINE, ESQUIRE

BY: For Defendant: BY:

Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR, RPR,CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court [phone]

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MR. ONGARO:

Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you.

MR. FITZGERALD: MS. LEE BECK: MR. BROWN: THE COURT:

Thank you, Your Honor.

Thank you. Thank you.

(Break in proceedings.) THE CLERK: Levitt versus Yelp! MS. LEE BECK: THE COURT: Good afternoon, Your Honor. Good afternoon. Recalling Civil 10-1321, 10-2351, Boris

Yes.

MS. LEE BECK:

We were hoping to have a schedule in Counsel for

place, but we've reached sort of an impasse.

Mr. Levitt and counsel for Yelp! wish to have a prolonged discovery, prolonged trial schedule. Counsel for Cats and Dogs

and the other plaintiffs wish for a more abbreviated one. I feel that further talking about this will result in an agreement, but they wish to -- they wanted -- they terminated the conversation and came here. MR. ONGARO: Well, Your Honor, what actually happened

was, when we went to sit down, Ms. Beck Lee became agitated, was screaming at me, pointing her finger at me. finger was this close (indicating). down and stop pointing her finger. seen in 19 years of practicing law. We then got her calmed down, to sit down. Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR, RPR,CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court [phone] We then Literally, her

I asked her to please sit It was a scene I have never

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started to go through -- and we had previously, in the scheduling order that we had put together, as the Court's ordered with the Cooley attorneys, had sat down and kind of scoped out what we planned for discovery. The first thing they disagreed with. Again, they

yelled at me, saying I'm in cahoots with them and I shouldn't be on this case. contentious. Every single item we went to became very

And I just -- it was counter- -- let me finish.

It was counterproductive. And I think -- we've already sat down and figured out kind of how we think it should go. them. Happy to sit down with

But Ms. Beck Lee, it's difficult to work with her under

these circumstances. And Mr. Brown can certainly attest to what happened. He's the neutral party here. MR. BROWN: Far be it from me to be in the position

of umpire here, but I have not had a conference quite like the one I experienced, in my years of practice here either. not productive. We, with counsel for Levitt, had come up with a chart that we put in a joint case management statement that was all pegged off the assumption that there wouldn't be discovery until the motion to dismiss was resolved, which it sounded like Your Honor wanted us to do. And so we started going through or attempting to go Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR, RPR,CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court [phone] It was

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through each of those line items with counsel for the Cats and Dogs Hospital. We got, probably, three items in. And it took

us ten minutes to get that far. And there's, apparently, something going on here that I'm not privy to, where there's a lot of atmospherics around something, but it has nothing to do with the merits of the discovery schedule. And it truly was a breakdown within ten

minutes, and so we decided to come back and report to Your Honor and take it from there. MR. ONGARO: Given that, Your Honor, perhaps we just I think that

submit the separate schedules you requested. probably makes the most sense. with our prior briefing. THE COURT:

We have submitted a schedule

Mr. Fitzgerald, from your firm, who is

going to take the laboring oar on the discovery, the class certification motion, responding to the motion to dismiss? I know that's a compound, complex question. But you

can take them apart, if you want, or answer it all in one. MR. FITZGERALD: Your Honor, it's difficult for me to

say now because it depends on what's going on in our other cases, as well. But, you know, I would say I tend to do most of the writing. So as far as, like, the motion to dismiss I would be

the one taking the laboring oar. But that being said, I'm just speaking about within Katherine Powell Sullivan, CSR, RPR,CRR Official Reporter - U.S. District Court [phone]