Court Opinion

ID: 9456600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:57:30.551764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:02.351262
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
I dissent and vote to affirm the judgment of the District Court.
In these times when delays in the trial of most civil jury cases in the Southern District now exceed two years from the time the case is at issue,1
2I see no reason whatever for holding that the trial judge abused his discretion in refusing to permit plaintiff to amend his complaint on five days’ notice before the case was reached for trial on June 17, 1970, a maneuver which undoubtedly would have required an adjournment of the trial had the trial judge permitted it.
On the contrary, the record demonstrates that the trial judge took the only proper and fair course in forbidding an amendment which materially changed the theory upon which the action had been commenced on May 13, 1968, and the theory and proof outlined in the detailed pre-trial order consented to by counsel on December 15, 1969.
Nowhere in the record does there appear any statement by counsel as to why counsel waited over two years until the very eve of the trial to seek an amendment which obviously would require further investigation and the examination and production of witnesses on the part of the defendant. One can only suppose that plaintiff’s counsel had not sufficiently ascertained the relevant facts until the eve of trial. But in conducting the business of the court, the trial judge must consider other interests besides attempting to protect plaintiffs from the tardiness and incompetence of their own counsel.2
Judge Mansfield succinctly stated the question he had to resolve on Wednesday, June 17, 1970, when the case was reached for trial. After saying that he would sustain the defendant’s motion to exclude evidence of any prior history of assaults by Eugenio Gonzalez to support plaintiff’s last-minute amendment, he went on to say:
It seems to me that the theory of your negligence, as it is set forth in your complaint, is 3 one that you are now advancing for the first time by way of a supplemental pre-trial memorandum dated June 10th and filed June 11th, 1970, approximately six days before the commencement of the trial of the action. How can you expect a defendant to be prepared to meet this new theory of negligence that you are advancing for the first time? You can’t. The whole purpose of pretrial procedure is to get these things on record, resolved, long before trial so that the defendant has an opportunity to prepare. (Emphasis added.)
Plaintiff’s counsel, Mr. McElligott, then suggested an explanation which in effect confessed the incompetence of plaintiff’s counsel as his firm had filed the complaint two years before, when he said:
Mr. McElligott: If your Honor please, Mr. Shapiro handled the deposi*104tion of this plaintiff by this defendant’s attorney. I did not get into this case until recently.
To this Judge Mansfield replied:
The Court: I am not suggesting that you personally are at fault. All I am saying is that when I am faced with a history including a pretrial order that makes no mention of this theory and it is advanced one week before trial for the first time, I would be rendering calendar and pretrial rules a nullity if I were then to turn around and say, “Oh, yes, you can amend.” It is a sufficiently new theory to come as a surprise. That is the impression I get. (Emphasis added.)
Plaintiff’s counsel did not dispute the court’s statement that the new theory was a surprise, as claimed by the defendant. Nor did he give any reason for not getting notice to defense counsel until Friday, June 12, a delay resulting from counsel’s placing the notice in the mail on June 10.
By what the majority does, this court now renders district court calendar and pretrial rules a nullity. It permits counsel to make last minute amendments on notification to the opposing party five days before trial is set to commence and thus adjourns a trial indefinitely. There is far more at stake than the mere inconvenience to defense counsel. The trial judge must find another case to try on short notice. All the witnesses summoned to attend must be excused. The defendant must now investigate and locate witnesses and arrange to depose them or produce them at trial to be held at some later time. I would leave the plaintiff to seek whatever redress he may be entitled to because of his counsel’s failure properly to litigate his claims.
Nothing is more important for the expeditious handling of the trial and the disposition of cases by the district courts than our full support of district court rules and their application by the trial judges except in those rare cases where we are convinced there has been an abuse of discretion. In Napolitano v. Com-pania Sud Americana De Vapores, 2 Cir., 421 F.2d 382 (1970) we held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to modify the pretrial memorandum and allow certain witnesses to testify because the case had been pending for four yeai's and the defendant waited until four days prior to trial before identifying the witnesses by name in his amended pretrial memorandum. In that case Judge Waterman found that the district court’s refusal to modify the pretrial order should be upheld because the decision had “a reasonable basis.” Id. at 386. See also Payne v. SS Nabob, 302 F.2d 803 (3rd Cir. 1962). In my opinion, the district court’s refusal to modify the pretrial order in the instant case also had a reasonable basis, and the action of the majority constitutes a most unfortunate retreat from sound principles of administering the business of the trial courts.
As I agree with Judge Feinberg that there is no merit to the plaintiff’s other claims of error, I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

. The median time interval from the Annual Report of the Administrative Office for 1970 is 27 months (Table O 10), which is exceeded only in two districts in the United States, the Eastern and Western Districts of Pennsylvania.

. The trial court has the right to expect that at pretrial proceedings counsel will be as thoroughly familiar with the case as they will be at trial. McCarthy v. Lerner Stores Corp., 9 F.R.D. 31 (D.D.C. 1949), Payne v. SS Nabob, 302 F.2d 803 (3rd Cir. 1962) and Note on Variance from Pre-Trial Orders, 60 Yale L.J. 179 (1951).

. While the minutes and the appendix read “is not one that you are now advancing, * * * ” this is obviously not what Judge Mansfield meant to say. (Emphasis added.)