Friday, September 19, 2014

WIRTW #337 (the “page limit” edition)


When you were in school, did you ever fudge the margins, or the font, or the line-spacing to fit your term paper within the confines of a teacher’s page limit. Let me give you lawyers reading today’s post a little practice pointer. Don’t do that when you file a brief with a court. Slate.com quotes the opinion of District Court Judge Carl Barbier, who took BP to task for playing with page limits.

BP’s counsel filed a brief that, at first blush, appeared just within the 35-page limit. A closer study reveals that BP’s counsel abused the page limit by reducing the line spacing to slightly less than double-spaced. As a result, BP exceeded the (already enlarged) page limit by roughly 6 pages. The Court should not have to waste its time policing such simple rules—particularly in a case as massive and complex as this. Counsel are expected to follow the Court’s orders both in letter and in spirit. The Court should not have to resort to imposing character limits, etc., to ensure compliance. Counsel’s tactic would not be appropriate for a college term paper. It certainly is not appropriate here. Any future briefs using similar tactics will be struck.

Ouch.

Here’s the rest of what I read this week:

Discrimination

HR & Employee Relations

Wage & Hour

Labor Relations