Opinion ID: 199314
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Continuance and Joinder

Text: 30 ISSI contends that the district court committed legal error by denying its pretrial motions to continue the trial and to join Atkinson as a necessary party. Both motions constituted an attempt by ISSI to prevent the present case from being decided without reference to ISSI's separate dispute with Atkinson arising out of the BIW Project. We consider each issue separately. 31 A district court's decision to grant or deny a continuance is analyzed under the abuse-of-discretion standard. Amarin Plastics, Inc. v. Md. Cup Corp., 946 F.2d 147, 151 (1st Cir. 1991). Only an unreasoning and arbitrary insistence upon expeditiousness in the face of a justifiable request for delay will abuse [that discretion]. Id. (quoting United States v. Torres, 793 F.2d 436, 440 (1st Cir. 1986)). Our review of the record convinces us that the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to grant the continuance. While it might have been helpful to ISSI to have its disagreement with Atkinson resolved before going to trial with NDI, in that it would have fixed the amount it was to receive from Atkinson, virtually all of the issues posed by the present litigation could be determined wholly without implicating the ISSI-Atkinson dispute. We further note that even though ISSI's dispute with Atkinson had not yet crystallized into formal legal proceedings at the time of the continuance request, ISSI nonetheless requested that the trial date in this case be postponed indefinitely. Cf. United States v. Gantt, 140 F.3d 249, 256 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (noting that district court may consider length of delay in deciding whether to grant or deny continuance motion). Given the potentially lengthy delay that this continuance could have caused, and the rather marginal benefit that would have redounded in return, we believe that the district court was well within its discretion in denying the motion. 32 ISSI also attacks the district court's denial of its motion to join Atkinson as a necessary party under Fed. R. Civ. P. 19(a). Consistent with its arguments regarding the continuance motion, ISSI asserts that the commonality of facts between the NDI-ISSI litigation and the ISSI-Atkinson dispute counseled in favor of joining Atkinson as a party in the present lawsuit. ISSI further argues that the district court applied the wrong legal standard in assessing its Rule 19(a) motion. 33 We have recently declined on two separate occasions to decide whether a Rule 19(a) denial should be reviewed de novo or for abuse of discretion because we found in both cases that the distinction would not be outcome-determinative. United States v. San Juan Bay Marina, 239 F.3d 400, 403 (1st Cir. 2001); Tell v. Trustees of Dartmouth Coll., 145 F.3d 417, 418-19 (1st Cir. 1998) (noting in dicta that the panel would be inclined to apply abuse-of-discretion standard if it mattered to the outcome). As in those cases, we need not resolve the issue here because doing so would not affect the result. 34 In this case, ISSI moved to join Atkinson as a necessary party well after the passage of the deadline to join additional parties specified in the pretrial scheduling order. It did not ask the court for leave to modify the scheduling order in its Rule 19(a) motion, nor did it articulate subsequently any good cause to excuse the belated filing, although it was required to do both in order to move to join a necessary party beyond the specified deadline. 11 See Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b); cf. Hernandez-Loring v. Universidad Metropolitana, 233 F.3d 49, 51 (1st Cir. 2000). ISSI's appellate briefs also fail to explicate its failure to properly raise the issue. In denying ISSI's motion for reconsideration of its decision not to join Atkinson, the district court noted that the failure to meet this deadline constituted an independent ground for denying the motion. We certainly believe that the district court had the discretion to remain faithful to the pretrial scheduling order that it had previously entered. Nickerson v. G.D. Searle & Co., 900 F.2d 412, 422 (1st Cir. 1990) (holding that district court decision not to deviate from final pretrial order constituted neither manifest injustice nor abuse of discretion requiring court of appeals to intervene). Accordingly, we affirm its denial of ISSI's motion to join Atkinson as a party. 12 35