Pulliam v. Equifax Credit Information Service LLC

Filing 14

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 10/29/2012:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
MICHAEL PULLIAM,
Plaintiff,
v.
EQUIFAX CREDIT INFORMATION
SERVICE LLC,
Defendant.

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No.

12 C 7144

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Equifax Credit Information Service LLC (“Equifax”) has filed
its Answer and affirmative defenses (“ADs”) to the pro se
Complaint brought against it by Michael Pulliam (“Pulliam”), in
which he charges multiple violations of the Fair Credit Reporting
Act.

This brief sua sponte memorandum order is occasioned by

some problematic aspects of that responsive pleading.
To begin with, Equifax’s counsel has totally ignored the
directive of this District Court’s LR 10.1:
Responsive pleadings shall be made in numbered
paragraphs each corresponding to and stating a concise
summary of the paragraph to which it is directed.
That requirement, most often complied with by quoting each
paragraph of a complaint verbatim and following that quotation
with a response to plaintiff’s allegation, has as its obvious
purpose the sparing of opposing counsel and the assigned judge
from the inconvenience of having to flip back and forth between
two pleadings to see what issues are and are not in dispute.
Defense counsel are scarcely strangers to this District Court, so

that the LR violation is really inexcusable.
Defense counsel’s next pleading error involves the use of
the disclaimer permitted by Fed. R. Civ. P. (“Rule”) 8(b)(5).

In

a number of instances (Answer ¶¶7 and 9, Count I Answer ¶¶3 and 5
and Count II Answer ¶¶14-171) counsel follow a faithful adherence
to that Rule with the phrase “and therefore denies them.”

That

is of course oxymoronic--how can a party that asserts (presumably
in good faith) that it lacks even enough information to form a
belief as to the truth of an allegation then proceed to deny it
in accordance with Rule 11(b)?

Accordingly the quoted phrase is

stricken from each of those paragraphs of the Answer.
Finally, the purported ADs included in the responsive
pleading also leave much to be desired.

Counsel would do well to

pay greater heed to the concept underlying Rule 8(c) and the
caselaw applying it, under which the allegations of a complaint
must be accepted as gospel--see also App’x ¶5 to State Farm Mut.
Auto. Ins. Co. v. Riley, 199 F.R.D. 276, 279 (N.D. Ill. 2001).
This Court will not take on the burden of providing chapter and
verse in that respect, stating only that defense counsel must

1

This Court is uncertain whether its references to
paragraphs in Counts I and II are correct. One of the byproducts
of counsel’s defense noncompliance with LR 10.1 is that the
responsive pleading uses the terminology (for example) “Paragraph
1 (second)” and “Paragraph 1 (third)” even though there are no
paragraphs designated in that fashion in the Complaint. When
counsel returns to the drawing board, that flaw is also expected
to be corrected.
2

follow that principle and the concept of notice pleading, which
in the federal system is incumbent on defendants as well as
plaintiffs.

Boilerplate defenses that are not sufficiently

fleshed out will not be accepted, and in any event AD 1--the
equivalent of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion--is just wrong and is
stricken.
In sum, the entire responsive pleading discussed here is
stricken, but with leave granted to file a self-contained Amended
Answer on or before November 13, 2012.

No charge is to be made

to defendant by its counsel for the added work and expense
incurred in correcting counsel’s errors.

Defense counsel is

ordered to apprise his client to that effect by letter, with a
copy to be transmitted to this Court’s chambers as an
informational matter (not for filing).

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

October 29, 2012

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