Long ago when I was interviewing for law jobs, my go-to move when the interview was devolving into the inane pitter patter meant to suss out if the applicant (me) was a secret axe-murderer or fifth columnist, was to ask if they were working on a book.
The joke at the time was that within the desiccated husk of every lawyer there is a creative who yearns for an outlet. In the fullness of time, I have come to see that it may also reflect the fact that a lawyer will write a book-length treatise about absolutely anything.
This leads me to another in my serious of rarely cited rules, and the case of HQ Specialty Pharma Corp. v. Fresenius Kabi USA, LLC, C.A. No. 21-1714-MN, D.I. 325 (D. Del. July 31, 2025). Following a jury trial and the resolution of post-trial motions, Judge Noreika ordered the parties to submit a form final judgment. The parties jointly submitted an agreed upon form that was about 7 pages long and contained numerous whereas clauses referencing the jury trial and a series of recitals on the form of an injunction pending appeal.
Despite the parties agreeing on the judgment, Judge Noreika rejected the submission citing to a portion of Rule 54 that oft goes unnoticed:
Having reviewed the proposed Final Judgment, the parties' proposal is REJECTED. The proposed judgment does not comply with Rule 54 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which specifies that "[a] judgment should not include recitals of pleadings, a master's report, or a record of prior proceedings." The parties may stipulate separately to an order that includes their agreed-upon terms, but the judgment must conform with Rule 54.
Id.
The parties did, in fact, resubmit that judgment re-captioned as a stipulation, which the Court promptly so-ordered. They then submitted a much shorter (about a page in total) final judgment that omitted the recitals and just noted how the various claims had been resolved, which was entered the next day.
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