Judge Seth D. Eichenholtz

E-mail messages to Chambers are not permitted, except as specified in these rules or as instructed by the Court.

In the event the parties are unable to resolve a dispute during an ongoing deposition, the parties are directed to contact Chambers by telephone with all parties on the line. The Court will either resolve the matter or instruct the parties on how to proceed. If the Court is not immediately available to address the dispute, the parties should continue the deposition to the extent possible while waiting for the Court’s response. Under no circumstances should the parties discontinue the deposition without contacting the Court.

For all other discovery disputes requiring judicial intervention, the parties must file a single letter, jointly composed. The letter should be filed on ECF using the “motion” event, describing the motion as seeking a discovery conference. If a party is raising a dispute as part of a status report to the Court, they should file the status report as a “motion” and not as a “status report.” The letter must describe (1) the nature of the dispute; (2) each party’s position regarding the facts and law surrounding the dispute; and (3) a description of the parties’ efforts to resolve the dispute in good faith prior to filing the motion. Each party’s portion of the joint submission shall be limited to three pages (up to six total pages in the joint letter). To the extent the parties need to file discovery requests and responses as exhibits to their letter, they must file only those requests and responses relevant to the motion. Unless the Court can resolve the matter based on the letter, the Court will schedule a conference to discuss the dispute and/or set a scheduling order so that the parties can brief a motion to compel or for a protective order. Absent unforeseen circumstances, applications to compel discovery made later than thirty (30) days prior to the close of discovery will be considered untimely.

parties shall submit ex parte settlement letters to Chambers by email to Eichenholtz_chambers@nyed.uscourts.gov. The ex parte settlement letters should include the following: (a) the demand(s) and offer(s) exchanged thus far; (b) the strengths and weakness of the party’s case; (c) any legal arguments in support of their settlement position and valuation of the case with citations to relevant authorities (including relevant verdicts, decisions, and settlements); (d) what, in the party’s view, are the obstacles to resolving the case; and (e) any additional information that the party believes will be helpful to the Court in trying to resolve the case, which must include any special terms the party is requesting as part of a final settlement agreement (confidentiality, indemnification, etc.). As these ex parte statements will be treated as confidential and will not be docketed, they should include a realistic valuation of the case and assessment of the party’s settlement position. The ex parte letters shall be limited to five (5) pages exclusive of attachments.

To request a pre-motion conference, the moving party is to file and serve a pre-motion conference letter, not to exceed three (3) pages, setting forth the basis for the anticipated motion.

The response shall not exceed three (3) pages.

Please follow Local Civil Rule 7.1(b) regarding formatting of memoranda and Local Civil Rule 7.1(c) regarding length of memoranda. Counsel should note that the rule now provides a word limit (as opposed to a page limit) in most cases and requires a certification of the word count.

All memoranda must be filed in a text-searchable format.