A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Substantial Completion

Penny
Adam Nir, Unsplash

As we've discussed, parties sometimes treat the deadline for "substantial completion of document production" as a soft deadline, doing a "rolling production" afterwards that can be quite voluminous. An opinion from Judge Bibas today shows the risk of not taking that deadline seriously.

In the opinion, Judge Bibas excluded over 60,000 rows of spreadsheet sales data that were produced by a defendant in an Fair Labor Standards Act class action, after the defendant waited until six months after the deadline for substantial completion of document production to produce the data.

As usual for Judge Bibas, his opinion is an interesting read and a bit different from what we typically see from other judges in Delaware. …

Typical small production of recent unimportant documents served after substantial completion deadline
Typical small production of recent unimportant documents served after substantial completion deadline Can you find the book you need?, Carles Rabada, Unsplash

"Substantial completion of document production" is not exactly a bright line.

Is it more than half?

More than 90%?

At least in Delaware, cases interpreting the issue are light on the ground. Usually, when presented with a steaming pile of documents after the substantial completion deadline, the parties will work out some modest schedule extension without any court intervention. This is probably for the best, but it means that the parties are usually working from a blank slate when negotiating the necessity and length of any extension.

Luckily for us, Judge Burke issued an Oral Order …