Post One Hundred Sixty Six: Serving as local counsel is fun
Yesterday morning I attended a hearing on behalf of an out-of-state law firm my office serves as local counsel for. In a nutshell, the plaintiff in the case wanted a report from one of our client's designated experts, saying that the designation was "useless." Whatever: the designation is, as required, a "fair summary" of the expert's anticipated testimony and plaintiff's counsel is free to fill in any blanks there may be during his deposition. So I feel like this is going to be a pretty simple hearing.
Of course not. The purported basis of the motion was just a ruse: the plaintiff's attorney tells me just before the hearing that the aforementioned law firm has not provided dates for the client's depositions despite several months' worth of requests from the plaintiff's attorney. Well, I do not know how they practice law up there but that type of stuff doesn't fly with courts down here. So I immediately get on the phone and tell them that we need to get deposition dates immediately.
The hearing went about as expected given that the judge does not like me (a long story but an entertaining one that I will likely write about next time I get around to posting). The judge said get the plaintiff dates by tomorrow, or I'll see you on Friday. What this means is that if the depositions aren't scheduled/finalized by today, the judge is likely going to strike our client's experts.
Nice.
So I call the firm up and give them the news. At that point I am informed that the plaintiff's attorney is full of shit. Apparently he was being the ass in this situation by demanding two consecutive dates for experts located in different states on opposite sides of the country. Of course I knew none of this as I had not been kept in the loop on deposition date discussions since I'm merely local counsel.
Goddammit.
Truly, there's nothing like being hamstrung before a hearing. When we serve as local counsel this type of thing happens just about every time: a dispute flares up between the plaintiff's attorney and the lead counsel and we get sent to argue some minor point in front of the judge because a 15 minute hearing is not worth the travel time.
Oh well. I still got the hours out of it.
Of course not. The purported basis of the motion was just a ruse: the plaintiff's attorney tells me just before the hearing that the aforementioned law firm has not provided dates for the client's depositions despite several months' worth of requests from the plaintiff's attorney. Well, I do not know how they practice law up there but that type of stuff doesn't fly with courts down here. So I immediately get on the phone and tell them that we need to get deposition dates immediately.
The hearing went about as expected given that the judge does not like me (a long story but an entertaining one that I will likely write about next time I get around to posting). The judge said get the plaintiff dates by tomorrow, or I'll see you on Friday. What this means is that if the depositions aren't scheduled/finalized by today, the judge is likely going to strike our client's experts.
Nice.
So I call the firm up and give them the news. At that point I am informed that the plaintiff's attorney is full of shit. Apparently he was being the ass in this situation by demanding two consecutive dates for experts located in different states on opposite sides of the country. Of course I knew none of this as I had not been kept in the loop on deposition date discussions since I'm merely local counsel.
Goddammit.
Truly, there's nothing like being hamstrung before a hearing. When we serve as local counsel this type of thing happens just about every time: a dispute flares up between the plaintiff's attorney and the lead counsel and we get sent to argue some minor point in front of the judge because a 15 minute hearing is not worth the travel time.
Oh well. I still got the hours out of it.
posted by Juggernaut at
10:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home