Mrdak v. Sood et al

Filing 42

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 7/12/2011:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
STAR MRDAK, etc.,
Plaintiff,
v.
KUL BIR SOOD, M.D., et al.,
Defendants.

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No.

11 C 1745

MEMORANDUM ORDER
On June 17, 2011 this Court learned that counsel for three
of the five defendants in this action--Drs. Kul Bir Sood and Dean
Rieger and Correct Care Solutions, LLC--had filed an answer for
those defendants a bit over two weeks earlier (on June 1) but had
violated this District Court’s LR 5.2(f) that obligated them to
deliver a hard copy of that responsive pleading to this Court’s
chambers.

Defense counsel were ordered to pay a $100 fine for

that violation as well as to comply with the LR 5.2(f) delivery
requirement--and that delivery then disclosed some problems with
the pleading that required correction, a subject covered in a
June 20 memorandum order.
In response counsel have now filed an Amended Answer that
regrettably hasn’t set things right.

At some dozen places in the

earlier filing, counsel’s drafted responses to plaintiff’s
allegations had taken the following inappropriate form (only one
example is needed):
28. At all relevant times, it was the duty of Kul
Bir Sood, MD, as medical director of the Will County

Jail, to schedule and approve medically necessary
surgery consults or collegial visits to health care
providers located outside of the Will County Jail for
inmates of the Will County Jail.
ANSWER: These Defendants admit only those
obligations imposed by law and deny the remaining
allegations contained in this paragraph.
And quite surprisingly, here is the typical minimally altered
provision of the Amended Answer:
28. At all relevant times, it was the duty of Kul
Bir Sood, MD, as medical director of the Will County
Jail, to schedule and approve medically necessary
surgery consults or collegial visits to health care
providers located outside of the Will County Jail for
inmates of the Will County Jail.
ANSWER: These Defendants admit only those duties
imposed by law and deny that the plaintiff has
accurately stated those duties.
But as counsel know, their original usage had triggered this
critical comment in the June 20 memorandum order:
That usage is really meaningless (precisely because it
is nonresponsive) when employed in Answer ¶¶9 and 10.
But far worse it is totally uninformative, and it also
violates the federal principle of notice pleading that
applies to plaintiffs and defendants alike, when it is
advanced in Answer ¶¶28-30, 32, 92-94, 146-48, 201 and
202.
It should have taken only a moment’s thought for counsel to
recognize that a reference to “those obligations imposed by law”
left the reader entirely in the dark as to just was or was not
being admitted--notice pleading principles clearly required
defense counsel to spell out their view of their clients’
obligations, instead of expecting plaintiff’s counsel and this

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Court to guess what was in defense counsel’s mind.
In short, defense counsel must once again “go back to the
drawing board to do a proper job.”

And once again counsel must

comply with the last two paragraphs of the June 20 memorandum
order.
Indeed, in that last respect, counsel’s “Motion for
Clarification” that accompanied the Amended Answer and that was
scheduled for presentment on July 18 must be and is denied.

For

one thing, no “clarification” of the unambiguous June 20
directive is needed.

But more importantly, counsel ought to

consider themselves fortunate that this Court’s order did not
include a required transmission to the client of copies of this
and the earlier memorandum order, a requirement that would have
exposed the nature and extent of counsel’s deficient performance.

________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

July 12, 2011

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