On Thursday, Judge Oetken granted defendant Wells Fargo’s motion for summary judgment in a derivative action brought on behalf of the now-defunct Lifetrade investment fund. Despite granting the motion, Judge Oetken explained in a footnote that the parties’ 56.1 statements were improper.
The Court noted that the parties submitted a collective 879 pages of “unnecessary, redundant, and improper 56.1 filings.” Specifically, both parties repeatedly disputed facts they admitted were true, and then, in response to each others’ statements, added repetitive boilerplate language “taking issue with the false disputes” that, while legally correct, “only amplified the problem.”
Judge Oetken set out his expectations:
As other courts in this district have already observed, such flagrant disregard of the Court’s Rules cannot stand. The net result of counsel’s deficiencies has been to impose on the Court and its limited resources the burden of parsing the entirety of the voluminous record in the case to ensure that [their] client’s claims receive thorough and just consideration. In the future, it simply will not do for counsel to say that genuine issues of material fact exist and then rely on the Court to go find them. Much more is expected from an experienced member of the bar of this Court and will henceforth be strictly required.