United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division
ARTHUR
J. TARNOW, DISTRICT JUDGE
OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO
STRIKE HARMONY'S HOUSE HOME HELP AGENCY, INC.'S
MOTION TO INTERVENE
MONA
K. MAJZOUB, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
This
civil action comes before the Court on a Motion to Intervene
filed by Proposed Intervening Plaintiff Harmony's House
Home Help Agency, Inc. (docket no. 24) and Defendants'
Motion to Strike the Motion to Intervene (docket no. 25).
Proposed Intervening Plaintiff filed a Response to
Defendants' Motion, to which Defendants replied. (Docket
nos. 26, 27.) The Motions have been referred to the
undersigned for consideration. (Docket no. 28.) The Court has
reviewed the pleadings, dispenses with oral argument pursuant
to Eastern District of Michigan Local Rule 7.1(f)(2), and is
now ready to rule pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(A).
Defendants
assert that Proposed Intervening Plaintiff's Motion to
Intervene should be stricken because Proposed Intervening
Plaintiff failed to properly seek concurrence pursuant to
Eastern District of Michigan Local Rule 7.1(a) before filing
the Motion. (Docket no. 25.) Local Rule 7.1(a) requires a
movant to seek concurrence from the opposing party prior to
filing a motion and, if concurrence is not obtained, to state
in the motion whether or not the parties conferred about the
motion. E.D. Mich. L.R. 7.1(a). “Seeking concurrence
from the opponent is a mandatory directive of the Local Rules
of this District.” U.S. v. Ramesh, No.
02-80756, 2009 WL 817549, at *6 (E.D. Mich. March 26, 2009).
Failure to seek concurrence prior to filing a motion is cause
for issuing an immediate denial of the relief requested.
Ramesh, 2009 WL 817549, at *6; Tubbs Bros., Inc.
v. Prime Eagle, LLC, No. 12-13104, 2012 WL 3065451 (E.D.
Mich. Jul. 27, 2012) (citation omitted) (“It is not up
to the Court to expend its energies when the parties have not
sufficiently expended their own.”).
Here,
Proposed Intervening Plaintiff's counsel sent an email to
Defendants' counsel on Sunday, February 10, 2019, at 9:51
p.m. to seek concurrence before filing the Motion to
Intervene. (Docket no. 25-2 at 2.) At 10:04 p.m., Proposed
Intervening Plaintiff's counsel filed the Motion.
(Id. at 3-4.) Defendants' counsel responded to
Proposed Intervening Plaintiff's counsel's email the
next morning, Monday, February 11, 2019, at 8:22 a.m.,
asserted that the request for concurrence was improper, and
indicated that she would therefore be filing a motion to
strike. (Docket no. 26-1 at 23.)
The
Motion to Intervene states that Proposed Intervening
Plaintiff sought and obtained concurrence from Plaintiffs and
that Defendants denied concurrence. (Docket no. 24 at 4.)
This statement is disingenuous. In fact, Proposed Intervening
Plaintiff's counsel sent the email seeking concurrence
late on a Sunday night and filed the Motion to Intervene a
mere thirteen minutes later. Defendants did not have a
reasonable chance to give or deny concurrence before Proposed
Intervening Plaintiff's counsel filed the Motion to
Intervene. See Powers v. Thomas M. Cooley Law Sch.,
No. 5:05-CV-117, 2006 WL 2711512, at *3 (W.D. Mich. Sept. 21,
2006) (holding that allowing an opposing party less than one
business day in which to respond to a request for concurrence
is “clearly an unreasonable time.”).
In
response to Defendants' Motion to Strike, Proposed
Intervening Plaintiff explains that its request for
concurrence was perfunctory because Defendants had previously
stipulated to similar requests to intervene and there was no
reason to withhold concurrence in the instant Motion. (Docket
no. 26 at 9.) This explanation lacks merit for two reasons.
First, Defendants' previous stipulation to similar
requests to intervene does not bind them to concurring in or
stipulating to future requests to intervene. Second, the
explanation ignores the purpose of Local Rule 7.1(a). As
Proposed Intervening Plaintiff points out in its Response,
Local Rule 7.1(a) was “designed to streamline
litigation, reduce unnecessary costs, and narrow
issues.” (Docket no. 26 at 12 (quoting Rumburg v.
McHugh, No. 10-CV-11670-DT, 2010 WL 3025024, at *1 (E.D.
Mich. July 29, 2010)). Had Proposed Intervening Plaintiff
given Defendants a reasonable amount of time within which to
respond to its request for concurrence, the parties'
motion practice related to Proposed Intervening
Plaintiff's intervention and the Court's expenditure
of time addressing the instant Motions may have been avoided.
The
Court finds that Proposed Intervening Plaintiff's
“efforts” to seek concurrence are a mockery of
Local Rule 7.1(a) and an abuse of process. The Court will
therefore grant Defendants' Motion to Strike (docket no.
25) Harmony's House Home Help Agency, Inc.'s Motion
to Intervene (docket no. 24) for failure to properly seek
concurrence in accordance with Local Rule 7.1(a).
IT
IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Defendants' Motion to
Strike Motion to Intervene by Harmony's House Home Help
Agency, Inc. [25] is GRANTED.
IT
IS FURTHER ORDERED that Harmony's House Home
Help Agency, Inc.'s Motion to Intervene [24] is
STRICKEN for failure to comply with ...