Court Opinion

ID: 9463150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:59:24.094667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:57.254968
License: Public Domain

MARKEY, Chief Judge,
United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals
(concurring):
I concur in the excellent opinion of Judge Duniway. The presence of Judge Browning’s strong and scholarly dissent, particularly its clear and forceful exposition of pleading considerations, prompts these few remarks.
I cannot find an allegation that defendants “did foreclose” free and unlimited access. Paragraph 18 alleges the defendants’ opposition was a coverup of a “plan” to foreclose. Moreover, it would appear that McDonald’s could not allege such foreclosure. It had full access. Whatever “free and unlimited” may mean, it cannot, in my view, require successful access or access unopposed. Nothing of record indicates that McDonald’s feared defendants’ opposition or that its freedom and ability to seek future permits was in any manner “chilled” by the expected opposition of defendants. On the contrary, as Judge Duniway’s opinion makes plain, the present suit for $11,-000,000 has an inherent chill factor with respect to defendants’ freedom to oppose future permits.
In any event, the case illustrates, in my view, an effect of the unhappy marriage of “notice” pleading and virtually unlimited discovery.* The “might makes right” potential in that combination is, of course, completely contrary to the intent behind the effort to free the pre-trial phase from formalism and surprise.
In today’s litigious milieu, a reversal based on rigid adherence to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure herein is not likely to have a shock value sufficient to force reform. However that may be, I believe such an attractively conservative approach should await an instance in which the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech, association, and petition would not, as here, be so clearly impeded.

 See National Conference of the Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice, 70 Federal Rules Decisions 79 (1976).