Powerlift Door Consultants, Inc. v. Shepard

Background

Powerlift Door Consultants, Inc. moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16 to amend the amended pretrial scheduling order. The existing order required the parties to complete fact discovery by August 15, 2022, file non-dispositive motions by August 29, 2022, file and schedule dispositive motions by October 15, 2022, and be ready for trial on or about February 15, 2023.

Powerlift asked to move several deadlines by 60 days. It requested an October 14, 2022 fact-discovery deadline, an October 28, 2022 deadline for non-dispositive motions, a December 14, 2022 deadline for dispositive motions, and an April 17, 2023 anticipated trial date. No defendant opposed the motion.

The court’s history included delays involving defendants’ discovery responses. Defendants’ counsel had withdrawn, the case had been stayed to allow defendants to obtain new counsel, and they had not obtained counsel. Lynn Shepard was representing himself. Powerlift stated that it served Shepard with additional interrogatories, document requests, and requests for admission on July 14, 2022, but had not received responses as of the motion’s filing. Powerlift said it still needed to take Shepard’s deposition.

Legal standard

Rule 16(b)(4) provides that a scheduling order may be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s consent. Local Rule 16.3 also requires a party seeking to modify a scheduling order to establish good cause. The primary measure of good cause is the moving party’s diligence in trying to meet the existing deadlines. The court explained that a party’s tactical decision to delay discovery while waiting to see whether settlement succeeds does not, by itself, establish good cause.

Analysis

The court found that Powerlift’s decision to wait for possible settlement before proceeding with additional discovery was not diligence supporting an extension. But the court also found that discovery had been delayed by the defendants’ self-represented status and Shepard’s apparent failure, at least through June 2022, to comply with a court discovery order.

The court concluded that the defendants’ delays, together with the importance of Shepard’s deposition, established good cause for a limited scheduling extension. Because Powerlift identified only Shepard’s deposition and his outstanding responses to the July 14, 2022 discovery requests as remaining discovery, the court refused to grant an unrestricted extension of fact discovery.

Ruling

The court granted in part and denied in part Powerlift’s motion to amend the amended pretrial scheduling order. It required the parties to complete Shepard’s deposition by October 24, 2022. It extended the deadline for non-dispositive motions and supporting documents concerning that deposition and the July 14 discovery requests to October 31, 2022.

For dispositive motions, the order gave instructions for scheduling a hearing and filing motion papers but did not adopt Powerlift’s requested December 14 filing deadline. The anticipated jury-trial date was changed to on or about February 27, 2023. All other deadlines remained unchanged.