Judge Tells Biglaw Firm To Stop Wasting His Time In Entertaining Benchslap

According to this judge, size does matter.

annoyed judgeWhen you’ve repeatedly submitted motions that surpass a court’s required page limitations and the judge on the case later begins an order with the following quotes, you know you’re probably going to be on the receiving end of a benchslap:

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 2, Scene 2)

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
— Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales (English tr.)

It seems that attorneys at Faegre Baker Daniels, after complying with a 10-page limit on motions and briefs in its representation of Sinclair Pipeline Company in a case that had been in the Colorado District Court system since at least 2012, recently decided to ignore that page limitation, submitting pleadings that ranged from 15 pages all the way up to 24 pages. Judge Todd Taylor was not particularly pleased with this course of conduct.

Brevity Benchslap 1

Aw crap, he broke out the French. Lawyers from Faegre Baker Daniels never asked Judge Taylor for permission to exceed the court’s 10-page limit on pleadings, and he writes that even if asked, he wouldn’t have approved the request. Judge Taylor goes on: “Slipping something that the judge has not actually ordered into a proposed order is never a wise tactic. And not slipping something into a proposed order—so that a party can then argue that the court has acted by omission—is even less wise.”

Judge Taylor then continues his assault on the lawyers from Faegre Baker Daniels, taking care to mention that size does matter in some cases (emphasis added):

Brevity Benchslap Emphasis

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Judge Taylor even brings up a case from the 1500s, related to the imprisonment of man who submitted a pleading that was incredibly lengthy. That prisoner was later paraded around an English court wearing the paperwork around his neck — after his head was put through a hole cut in it by the prison warden. “I do not often wax nostalgic for the rigors of the common law. But, then again, sometimes I do,” writes Judge Taylor.

Because the lawyers from Faegre Baker Daniels succeeded only in pissing off Judge Taylor, all of the firm’s too-long motions and briefs were struck from the record, except for one, but only because it was fully briefed and ripe for ruling. Ouch.

On the bright side, at least Judge Taylor didn’t put the lawyers in jail.

(Flip to the next page to see Judge Todd Taylor’s entertaining benchslap in full.)

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