Court Opinion

ID: 9553457
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:29:58.732678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:31:10.176704
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring in part and concurring in the result in part):
I concur in parts I and III of the court’s opinion. Because I have some trepidation about the majority’s refusal to even consider, as a fact in mitigation, counsel’s informal stipulation to extend plaintiff’s time for supplementing her witness list, I concur only in the result of part II.
While the trial court may surely be concerned for its calendar and may impose reasonable deadlines to insure the calendar and its business are not disrupted, counsel ought to have some flexibility to resolve minor matters between themselves. Indeed, limited judicial resources are preserved by not requiring counsel to bother the court for approval every time they perceive some need to massage the preliminary details of a scheduling order.
In this case, with trial still four months off, no risk of disruption was posed to the court’s basic schedule by permitting plaintiff to defer supplementing her witness list while settlement discussions progressed, at least for some reasonable time. To require counsel to reduce their understanding to writing and submit it to the court for an order of approval would not only require judge time to be expended on a pro forma matter, but also would require some part of counsel’s time to be diverted from the salutary business of settlement discussions. But had such a stipulation been prepared and submitted, I have no doubt the court would have signed off on it, at least for a specific period, reasonable in *313duration, that would not jeopardize the discovery cut-off date.
I would prefer that the informal extension in this case not be dismissed out of hand. Rather, I would prefer to premise our decision at least partly on this basis: When settlement efforts terminated definitively on June 28, the extension terminated as well by its terms. It became incumbent on plaintiffs counsel immediately to designate his new expert. This he failed to do. Instead, nearly two months went by before he finally got around to submitting the new expert’s name — a scant week prior to trial and after the discovery cut-off. Yes, this violated the terms of the scheduling order. Just as important in my view, it also violated the terms of counsel’s stipulation.