At a hearing today, Judge Kennelly set forth his preferences on how parties files documents in CM/ECF. He explained that he deals with all filings electronically, and large exhibits as permitted by the Delaware CM/ECF system interfere with his work flow.
He threatened to deny motions going forward (at least in that case) if parties combine exhibits in that way, specifically pointing to the following docket item:
As you can see in the highlight, the party combined multiple exhibits into sub-filings, which makes it difficult and slow to download, and impossible to download individual exhibits.
Judge Kennelly prefers that parties do it this way:
Visiting Judge Wolson has expressed similar concerns for similar reasons, and his procedures go a step further. Judge Wolson requires parties to specifically name each exhibit on the docket to identify what it is, like this:
Here is the text of that portion of his procedures:
When submitting exhibits via ECF, Parties should submit each exhibit as a separate document on the CM/ECF system, rather than as a single file. If Judge Wolson receives a filing with a single document marked “Exhibits,” he will strike the filing. In addition, when parties submit exhibits via ECF, they must give each document a name identifying the document. Thus, it is not sufficient to label a file “Exhibit A.” Instead, the name should be “Contract,” “Declaration of John Smith,” or some other reference that permits Judge Wolson to identify what the exhibit is without having to open the file.
For heavy CM/ECF users (ahem, like myself), having the exhibits labeled this way is great. It makes it much easier to pull individual items off of the docket without having to spend time looking up which exhibit is which.
Should We Be Doing This All of the Time?
Honestly, separating and labeling the exhibits could be a best practice for all cases where it's not cost prohibitive (it does add some administrative burden in composing and checking the names)—at least for frequently-referenced items like SJ appendixes. I've heard at least one Delaware judge comment in a positive way, for example, when we've filed pretrial orders this way.
Update: No We Shouldn't Be!
In response to this post, I've heard feedback from someone with direct experience that at least one of our Delaware judges' chambers strongly prefers the opposite of this, that the exhibits be grouped together for easier download. So, it's probably best to keep doing it how you've been doing it for D. Del. judges!
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to receive free e-mail updates about new posts.
