&39;no Written Discovery Motions' Technique Reduces Delays, Costs, and Judges' Workloads
| Publication year | 2013 |
| Pages | 65 |
| Citation | Vol. 42 No. 3 Pg. 65 |
By Richard P. Holme
Departments Judges' Corner
by Richard P. Holme, in collaboration with R. Brooke Jackson, David S. Prince, Edward D. Bronfin, Robert L. McGahey, and Natalie KnowIton
Judges' Corner is published quarterly to provide information Colorado judges would like to disseminate to attorneys. If you would like to suggest topics or write an article for this Department, please send an e-mail to Coorindating Editor Alan Loeb, Colorado Court of Appeals Judge, at alan.loeb@judicial.state.co.us.
About the Authors
Richard P. Holme is senior of counsel with Davis Graham and Stubbs LLP—(303) 892-9400, richard.holme@dgslaw.com. Holme collaborated with the following Colorado judges to write the article: R. Brooke Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado; David S. Prince, Fourth Judicial District Court; Edward D. Bronfin, Denver District Court; and Robert L. McGahey, Denver District Court. Also contributing was Natalie Knowlton, Manager of the Quality Judges Initiative for the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System.
A litigator's heart may palpitate when a judge says: "In this court, you may not file a written discovery motion—(pause) T—until you have discussed it with me first." However, instructions to this effect are not new. Jefferson County District Court Judge Bill DeMoulin gave similar instructions to attorneys appearing before him twenty years ago, as did El Paso County District Judge Donald Campbell. Today, the "no written discovery motions" approach is being employed with greater frequency, at least in the Denver and El Paso County district courts. The method can substantially assist in securing the "just, speedy and inexpensive" determination of cases.[1] Furthermore, this process significantly eases the judge's time and work in pretrial management of cases.
I was first exposed to this technique twenty years ago, and was immediately impressed with its efficacy. Lest the opinion of one attorney isn't enough, my co-contributors for this article were four distinguished Colorado judges experienced with using the method:
•U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson, who routinely uses the technique with significant savings of time and effort;
•El Paso County District Court Judge David Prince, who has been using this technique for more than five years with great success;
•Denver District Court Judge Edward Bronfin, who adopted the technique in his standard pretrial order and has persuaded a number of his colleagues to use it; and
•Denver District Court Judge Robert McGahey, who has adopted it more recently but already can compare and contrast it favorably to his former method.
I also relied on the expertise of Natalie Knowlton, who is Manager of the Quality Judges Initiative for the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), a national research center led by former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis.[2] Knowlton has been interviewing leading judges around the country about this technique for a larger presentation on best practices for trial courts under the auspices of the IAALS.
Traditional Discovery Motions
In most Colorado courts, as well as in most other courts around the country, when the parties are at loggerheads on discovery, the process moves roughly as follows: Party Q files an extensive discovery request for documents. Party A prepares a response that is loaded with objections to each request —"overbroad, " "burdensome, " and "oppressive" are just some of the adjectives thrown around—and provides little more. Party Q sends an e-mail to Party A, stating that the response is wholly...
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