United States of America v. $28,720.00 in United States Currency

Filing 20

ORDER denying 17 Motion for Reconsideration re 16 Order on Motion to Compel. Signed by Magistrate Judge Dennis Howell on 5/5/14. (ejb)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA
ASHEVILLE DIVISION
1:13cv106
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

)
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Plaintiff,
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v.
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)
$28,720.00 in United States Currency,
)
)
Defendant.
)
___________________________________ )

ORDER

Pending before the Court is the Government’s Motion to Reconsider [# 17].
The Government moves the Court to reconsider its prior Order denying the
Government’s Motion to Compel. As a threshold matter, the Court DENIES the
motion for failure to comply with the Court’s Local Rules and submit a legal brief
in support of its motion. See LCvR 7.1(C). A party may not satisfy the
requirements of the Local Rules by incorporating its previously filed memorandum
of law filed in support of a motion that the Court denied into a motion to
reconsider. Instead, a party must file a legal brief setting forth a legal and factual
basis for why reconsideration of the Court’s Order is necessary. This legal brief
should contain a summary of the pertinent facts with citations to the record, set
forth the legal standard for granting a motion to reconsider with proper citations as
set forth in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, and then explain how
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the facts of the particular case before the Court satisfy the relevant legal standard.
It is not a complicated process.
Aside from the motions procedural failures, the motion fails to address the
primary reason the Court denied the Motion to Compel – its untimeliness, as the
Government filed the discovery motion after the expiration of the discovery period.
As this Court stated in its prior Order, and as both this Court and the District Court
have repeatedly held, discovery motions must be filed prior to the close of
discovery. (Order, Apr. 17, 2014.) Here, the Government waited until after the
close of discovery to file its motion to compel the deposition testimony of one of
the Claimants.
Finally, the Government’s one and a half page motion fails to set forth
sufficient legal basis or any actual legal analysis demonstrating why
reconsideration of the Court’s prior Order is required under the applicable law.
The motion fails to address the legal authority cited in the Court’s prior Order and
fails to provide the Court with any substantive legal authority or legal analysis in
support of its Motion to Reconsider. Motions such as these do little other than
waste judicial resources and prevent the Court from ruling on properly filed
motions, which are supported by legal authority, and contain actual legal analysis.
Accordingly, the Court DENIES the Motion to Reconsider [# 17].

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Signed: May 5, 2014

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