Knopf v. Esposito
- Sarah Netburn
- 1:17-cv-05833
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Knopf v. Esposito, Judge Cote ordered a telephone conference to proceed after plaintiffs rejected and then purported to accept a Rule 68 offer.
The order affected the plaintiffs, the defendants, the scheduled discovery conference, and the District Attorney’s Office, which Esposito was ordered to serve.
What happened
In Knopf v. Esposito, Norma Knopf and Michael Knopf rejected Frank M. Esposito’s offer of judgment, then filed a purported acceptance without notifying the court that they had first rejected it. The court had canceled a scheduled conference because it was unaware of the rejection.
Esposito asked the court to reinstate the conference. The court explained that under Rule 68, an unaccepted offer is treated as withdrawn and has no operative effect.
Judge Denise Cote ordered the March 2, 2021 telephone conference to proceed as originally scheduled. She also ordered Esposito to serve the order on the District Attorney’s Office.
The detailed version
- Knopf v. Esposito · No. 1:17-cv-05833
- Sarah Netburn
- Mar. 2, 2021
Background
Norma Knopf and Michael Knopf are the plaintiffs. The defendants are Frank M. Esposito, Dorsey & Whitney, LLP, Nathaniel H. Akerman, Edward S. Feldman, and Michael Hayden Sanford.
According to Esposito’s March 1 letter and attachments, the plaintiffs rejected his February 17 offer of judgment on February 18. They later filed a purported acceptance on March 1 without notifying the court of the earlier rejection. Because the court did not know about the rejection, it canceled a telephone conference scheduled for March 2 concerning Esposito’s request for discovery. Esposito asked the court to reinstate that conference.
Legal standard
The court relied on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68, which provides that an unaccepted offer is considered withdrawn. Citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, the court explained that a rejected settlement offer has no operative effect.
Ruling
The court stated that, because the plaintiffs had rejected Esposito’s Rule 68 offer of judgment, they should not have filed an acceptance of it. Judge Denise Cote ordered that the telephone conference scheduled for March 2, 2021, at 2:00 p.m. proceed as originally scheduled. The court also ordered Esposito to serve the District Attorney’s Office with the order.
Disposition
The order addressed the scheduling of a discovery-related conference and the effect of the rejected offer; it did not decide the underlying claims in the case.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.