Thorne v. Kins et al

Filing 68

MEMORANDUM Order. Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 10/17/2014. Mailed notice(tlp, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
DEBORAH L. THORNE, not individually
but as COURT-APPOINTED RECEIVER
OF ALPHAMETRIX, LLC AND
ALPHAMETRIX GROUP, LLC,
Plaintiff,
v.
ALEKS A. KINS, CHARLEY PENNA,
DAVID YOUNG, GEOFF MARCUS and
GEORGE BROWN,
Defendants.

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Case No. 14 C 2472

MEMORANDUM ORDER
What, other than perhaps a lack of considered thought, can possess a lawyer who
represents more than one defendant in a civil action -- particularly an action of any degree of
complexity -- to file a separate answer on behalf of each client? It does not seem to occur to
such counsel that, even apart from a failure to consider that any judge who makes it his or her
business to review all pleadings when filed is subjected to an extra and unnecessary burden when
he or she has to deal (as in this case) with two responsive pleadings of 37 pages each rather than
just one, there is also an important adjunct that attaches to filing a single combined responsive
pleading.
What the "considered thought" referred to at the beginning of the preceding paragraph
would have produced is the recognition that such a combined pleading would bring into sharp
focus the extent to which the two clients share common cause and the extent, if any, to which
they do not. That kind of information has particular important in the notice pleading regime that
governs federal practice. In sum, because of the ease that attaches, in this era of automation,

with which a curative amendment to such pleadings can be generated, the burden will be shifted
to counsel for defendants Aleks Kins and Charley Penna to supplant their present Dkt. Nos. 65
and 66, which are hereby stricken, with a single superseding and consolidated responsive
pleading on behalf of both clients.
It is quite true that advances in technology have simplified compliance with what has just
been ordered. But in an odd way those advances have been counterproductive. In the ancient
era in which this Court began the practice of law, any multicopied document required a
combination of carbon paper, a celluloid shield to permit the correction of any misstrike without
smudging another of the carbon copies, and other impediments. There was no easy way to revise
such a document and its multiple copies if that became necessary. So if what has been
encountered here had been the product of that era, with a consequent judicial requirement of a
do-over because of the defense counsel's lack of anticipatory considered thought, that lawyer
might well have been confronted by a secretarial strike.

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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: October 17, 2014

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