L-3 Communications Corporation et al v. Jaxon Engineering & Maintenance, Inc. et al

Filing 660

ORDER denying without prejudice 503 Defendant Jaxon's Motion for Rule 11 Sanctions Against L3 for Failure to Conduct a Reasonable Pre-suit Investigation as to L3's Patent Infringement Claims. By Magistrate Judge Kathleen M. Tafoya on 6/13/2013.(klyon, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
Magistrate Judge Kathleen M. Tafoya
Civil Action No. 10–cv–02868–MSK–KMT

L-3 COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION, and
L-3 SERVICES, INC.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
JAXON ENGINEERING & MAINTENANCE, INC.,
JONI ANN WHITE,
RANDALL K. WHITE,
SCOTT WHITE,
SUSAN RETTIG,
CHARLES RETTIG,
JAMES YOUNGMAN,
JERRY LUBELL,
KELLY RICE,
JOHN MCCLURE, and
JOHN DOES 1-25, said names being fictitious as such names are unknown at this time,
Defendants.

ORDER

This matter is before the court on “Defendant Jaxon’s Motion for Rule 11 Sanctions
Against L3 for Failure to Conduct a Reasonable Pre-suit Investigation as to L3’s Patent
Infringement Claims” [Doc. No. 503] filed January 14, 2013. Defendants argue the patent
infringement claims brought by Plaintiffs (hereinafter collectively “L-3”) were filed without
proper pre-suit investigation in violation of Fed. R. Civ. P. 11. Defendants maintain that L-3

relied wholly on speculation about Jaxon Engineering & Maintenance, Inc.’s testing equipment
and that this speculation does not constitute a reasonable pre-suit endeavor to determine whether
patent infringement claims were truly viable. (Mot. at 1.) L-3 counters that it obtained and
possessed
a sea of pre-filing evidence demonstrating that Defendants conspired to dupe L-3
into unwittingly purchasing and storing HEMP testing parts in L-3’s North Lab
facilities in Colorado Springs (the “North Lab”), intended to be transferred to
Jaxon upon the event of its first Government contract award, an event that would
also trigger the pre-coordinated resignation of numerous co-conspirators from
their employment at L-3 so they could use the parts to build one or more replicas
of each L-3 HEMP test sets to permit Jaxon to conduct the testing required under
those contracts.
Resp. [Doc. No. 544] at 2.
This case was filed on November 23, 2010. Since that time the parties have engaged in
voluminous discovery, participated in a full-scale preliminary injunction hearing, filed and
argued numerous contested discovery motions, filed 659 pleadings and had a special master
review almost 20,000 pages of documents contained on various computers belonging to the
defendants. There are currently ten substantive pending motions, not counting motions to
restrict documents nor this motion. Additionally, there are major reviews of the special master’s
findings and report which have yet to be undertaken by the court. There is still five months left
in the discovery period and dispositive motions are not due to be filed until January 24, 2014.
It is premature and a waste of precious judicial resources for the court to sift through the
vast amount of evidence which would be required to fully address the Defendants’ motion.

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Judicial resources would be far more efficiently used by addressing this issue post-trial, after
both sides have had an opportunity to present their evidence to the court.
WHEREFORE, it is ORDERED
“Defendant Jaxon’s Motion for Rule 11 Sanctions Against L3 for Failure to Conduct a
Reasonable Pre-suit Investigation as to L3’s Patent Infringement Claims” [Doc. No. 503] is
DENIED without prejudice to raising the issues addressed therein at a more expedient point in
the proceedings, including subsequent to a trial on the merits.
Dated this13th day of June, 2013.

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