IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

JONATHAN PHILLIPS, et al., )

)

Plaintiffs, )

)

v. ) No. 12 C 1791

)

DePAUL UNIVERSITY, etc., et al.,)

)

Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM ORDER

This District Court’s random assignment system has just

delivered the captioned action to this Court’s calendar via

removal from the Circuit Court of Cook County’s Chancery

Division, with federal subject matter jurisdiction having been

invoked by defendant DePaul University (“DePaul”) under the Class

Action Fairness Act. That assignment has triggered (as always)

this Court’s issuance of an initial scheduling order, but one

aspect of the Complaint has also led to the contemporaneous

issuance of this memorandum order.

As may be perfectly appropriate under state court practice,

the Complaint couples the plaintiffs’ pleading of evidence with a

vengeance (its 134 paragraphs occupy just over 56 pages) with a

substantial number of exhibits whose aggregate bulk exceeds that

of the Complaint itself by a substantial margin. If such a

filing had been attempted in this District Court as an original

matter, there is no question that this Court would have stricken

it as noncompliant with Fed. R. Civ. P. (“Rule”) 8(a), which

Case: 1:12-cv-01791 Document #: 10 Filed: 03/14/12 Page 1 of 3 PageID #:244
calls for (1) “a short and plain statement of the grounds for the

court’s jurisdiction” and (2) “a short and plain statement of the

claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”

That poses something of a dilemma. Pleading in the federal

courts is of course controlled by the Rules, but plaintiffs’

counsel can scarcely be faulted for conforming to state court

practice in a lawsuit filed there in the first instance. All the

same, this Court is loath to thrust on defense counsel the task

of pleading in response to such an extraordinarily prolix

Complaint that would not have passed muster if brought here in

the first instance.

Accordingly plaintiffs’ counsel are ordered to file, as

promptly as possible, a self-contained Amended Complaint that

more reasonably meets the Rule 8(a) standards, after which 1

defense counsel are ordered to file a responsive pleading within

21 days of their receipt of that Amended Complaint. That task 2

on both sides should readily be capable of completion before the

initial status hearing, which (as always) this Court orders to be

 While they are at it, plaintiffs’ counsel ought to 1

correct their prayers for relief under what they have labeled as

their First Cause of Action and Second Cause of Action. In each

of those instances counsel have mistakenly asked relief against

another law school (IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law) rather than

named defendant DePaul.

 Even though the legal effect of an amended complaint is 2

to supersede the original, in this instance the state court

version can effectively serve the function of a detailed bill of

particulars.

2

Case: 1:12-cv-01791 Document #: 10 Filed: 03/14/12 Page 2 of 3 PageID #:245
held 49 days after the original Complaint’s filing in this

federal court.

________________________________________

Milton I. Shadur

Senior United States District Judge

Date: March 14, 2012

3

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