Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_06-cv-02915/USCOURTS-cand-4_06-cv-02915-25/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 28:1331 Fed. Question

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SUN MICROSYSTEMS INC.,

Plaintiff, No. C 06-1665 PJH

v. ORDER DEFERRING CONSIDERATION

OF MOTION TO EXTEND EXPERT

 HYNIX SEMICONDUCTOR INC., et al., DISCOVERY AND SETTING FURTHER

CASE MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE

Defendants.

_______________________________/

This Document Also Relates to:

Unisys Corp. v. Hynix et al., C 06-2915 PJH

All American Semiconductor v. Hynix et al., C 07-1200 PJH

Edge Electronics v. Hynix et al., C 07-1207 PJH

Jaco Electronics v. Hynix et al., C 07-1212 PJH

DRAM Claims Liquidation Trust v. Hynix et al., C 07-1381 PJH

_______________________________/

Before the court is defendants’ administrative motion to modify the pretrial

scheduling order, to extend the time for defendants’ submission of expert reports. 

Defendants’ request is the second such request in less than 4 months, coming on the heels

of plaintiffs’ September 2007 request to modify the pretrial schedule – a request that the

court largely denied on September 24, in view of the fact that both parties had only three

months prior to that expressly requested the very pretrial schedule from which plaintiffs

sought relief. Notwithstanding the relatively short time period between the June 2007 entry

of the parties’ requested pretrial schedule and the court’s denial of plaintiffs’ September

2007 request to modify pretrial dates, defendants now seek similar relief from the court. 

According to defendants, an extension of the deadline for filing their expert reports is

warranted for a variety of reasons, including: the presence of outstanding discovery

Case 4:06-cv-02915-PJH Document 197 Filed 01/10/08 Page 1 of 4
United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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disputes; outstanding depositions of plaintiffs’ experts; plaintiffs’ refusal to properly answer

outstanding contention interrogatories; and plaintiffs’ failure to produce relevant evidence. 

All of which, assert defendants, makes the timely filing of expert reports impossible. In

support of these claims, defendants submit the Declaration of Julian Brew, along with

various exhibits attached thereto. Plaintiffs, unsurprisingly, vigorously contest defendants’

assertions, submitting their own Declaration of Jerome Murphy, which consists of forty-two

paragraphs setting forth plaintiffs’ contrary version of events, and various other exhibits. 

Preliminarily, the court is uninterested in combing through the parties’ competing

declarations and submitted exhibits, in an effort to ascertain which side’s recounting of

events is more persuasive, or which version of events is more credible. Nor is the court

inclined to involve itself in the minutiae of the parties’ discovery disputes. The court

expects the parties to be able to work together in cooperative fashion, to undertake good

faith efforts to arrive at mutually agreeable dates, and to avoid burdening the court with

unnecessary requests for relief that serve to detract from the time that the court is able to

spend on more pressing and legitimate matters – many of which are currently pending in

the same overall DRAM litigation to which the instant cases belong. 

Normally, the court does not establish or require pretrial schedules as extensive as

the pretrial schedule currently in effect in the instant cases, which calls for deadlines with

respect to not only expert reports, but expert depositions as well. This is because, for its

part, the court is primarily concerned simply with establishing firm deadlines with respect to

dispositive motions and the trial date, and with ensuring that the discovery cutoff date

provides the parties adequate time to meaningfully prepare and litigate their cases at both

aforementioned stages. 

Here, however, the court agreed to the parties’ pretrial schedule because the parties

themselves specifically requested and stipulated to such a schedule. Clearly, though, the

schedule is not working for either party, as both parties have now requested relief from it, in

the less than seven months since the parties requested entry of that same schedule. 

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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Moreover, although defendants have couched their present request by way of a request to

modify the date for the submission of their expert reports, a quick review of the pretrial

schedule suggests that any adjustment to this date will likely result in the need for

additional modifications to the rest of the pretrial schedule, up to and including the trial

date. 

In view of this situation, and because the court desires to avoid having to entertain

similar requests by either party in the future, the court declines to modify the current pretrial

schedule without additional input from the parties. To that end, the parties are hereby

ORDERED to attend a further case management conference, which shall take place on

January 24, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. The parties shall meet and confer beforehand, and come

to the conference prepared to state whether they seek modification of the deadlines for

expert report submission only, or for any additional pretrial deadlines as well. The parties

shall also be prepared to discuss and jointly propose, at a minimum, mutually agreeable

dates for the setting of (1) a final cutoff deadline for all expert discovery; (2) a dispositive

motion hearing deadline; and (3) a pretrial and trial date. The court will not impose any

further pretrial deadlines aside from these, unless the parties mutually agree upon such

dates, and furthermore are able to persuade that court that no further modifications to such

schedule are foreseeable. 

In addition, the parties shall take into account the following: first, to the extent that

the court is amenable to providing relief from the current schedule in order to accommodate

expert discovery, no similar relief shall be granted for fact discovery, since the fact

discovery cutoff has already passed. Second, while the court generally requires 120 days

between the hearing on dispositive motions and the trial date, in the present instance, the

court is inclined to require 150 days between the two. Finally, assuming the current pretrial

schedule is adjusted and the trial date continued, the earliest available trial date will likely

be June 2009, due to the court’s voluminous calendar. 

In sum, the court declines to modify the pretrial schedule as suggested by

Case 4:06-cv-02915-PJH Document 197 Filed 01/10/08 Page 3 of 4
United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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defendants, pending completion of the case management conference ordered herein. The

court accordingly DEFERS consideration of defendants’ administrative motion until such

time, and the parties are relieved of the current pretrial deadlines until then. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: January 10, 2008 ______________________________

PHYLLIS J. HAMILTON

United States District Judge

Case 4:06-cv-02915-PJH Document 197 Filed 01/10/08 Page 4 of 4