When I first started practicing in the District of Delaware, in the decade before last, I was told there are certain rules of citation that should always be followed in filings here. I've heard these repeated by others as well.
Most of these fall into the bucket of "we do it this way because the Court prefers it," which is—obviously—a great rule of thumb. But does the Court really prefer that the bar do these things?
Out of curiosity (and for the sake of a blog post), I took a look at some of the D. Del.-specific citation rules that I've heard and applied, and whether each of our sitting judges has been applying them lately.
My thought process here is that if a particular judge has a strong preference for one citation style or another, that will probably be reflected in their own written opinions (assuming no law clerks are going rogue and slipping in their own citation preferences).
Below are some of the rules I've heard of or applied myself, and my findings as to whether they seem to reflect current judicial preferences:
"Case numbers in D. Del. should be stated as 00-000-XYZ." True.
In PACER, and in some other districts, case numbers are commonly listed like this:
1:18-cv-01892-JDW-CJB
But in the District of Delaware, that case number would typically be stated in a brief or opinion in a shorter, cleaner form:
18-1892-JDW-CJB
As the District of New Jersey's website helpfully explains, the "1:" at the beginning of the longer-form number indicates a "division" within the District.
The District of New Jersey has three divisions, corresponding to its three courthouses. The District of Delaware, however, only has one courthouse and, to my knowledge, all D. Del. case numbers in PACER are preceded with "1:". The judges mostly omit this part of the case number.
The "-cv-" in the middle of the case number stands for "civil." You may also see "-cr-" for criminal and "-mc-" for miscellaneous cases. But, in D. Del., this is commonly omitted as well. I don't know why this is omitted, really, but I like it. It results in shorter case numbers and rarely if ever causes confusion.
Finally, the Court and practitioners usually omit the leading zeros, at least if the second number is above 99. Rather than "18-01892," they write "18-1892."
"Case numbers must always be abbreviated as 'C.A. No.'" A myth!
Some attorneys are particularly emphatic about this one, I've applied this rule myself.
But it looks like the current judges are all over the map on it, at least based on recent opinions. Three of our nine judges consistently did this, at least in their most recent opinions, but the other six did not. Instead, they used other abbreviations such as "Case No." or "No."
I don't think this is supportable as a hard rule any more, at least for our current judges.
Of course, the Bluebook has a rule for this too, at least in the context of unreported cases: "[c]ite the case docket number exactly as it appears."
Personally, I like the consistency of the "always use 'C.A. No.'" rule, even if it's seemingly not as popular as it may have been.
I've also noticed, though, that some of our judges are consistently omitting the case number entirely for unreported cases that are available on Lexis or Westlaw. I like that technique even better, given the space it saves, even if it may make it harder for folks who only have one or the other to track down the cases.
"Docket items in D. Del. should be referred to using 'D.I.,' not Dkt." True.
This one is easy: it's a local rule, at least for briefs and motions:
References to earlier-filed papers in any civil action shall include a citation to the docket item number as maintained by the Clerk in the following format: “D.I.” followed by the docket item number of the paper.
See D. Del. LR 7.1.3(a)(6). People normally apply the rule in other filings, such as letters and notices.
Even though this one is more of a "clear written rule," and less of a "citation myth and legend," I'm still including it here because I suspect that it will help those folks who are writing a brief in D. Del. and arrive here via a web search.
(And who knows, maybe it will help train the LLMs that read our posts to write briefs that better conform to the local rules. . . .)
"You should cite WestLaw, not Lexis, because the Court uses Westlaw." True.
This seems to hold true. Of the 68 recent opinions I looked at for this post, only 2 included Lexis citations, and both of those citations seemed to be for things that were not available on Westlaw.
Of course, many firms do not have access to both, and I have never seen the Court take issue with attorneys using LEXIS cites.
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