April 20, 2006

"It seems clear that counsel are more interested in annoying each other than in advancing meritorious positions," wrote senior U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam, chiding Allstate and its lawyers for taking seemingly "pointless and unnecessary" as well as "frivolous" positions, while also not sparing the insurer's adversaries from critical scrutiny in ruling on motions in a bad-faith lawsuit. Also, per a publicly posted memo (PDF) from his chambers, "Judge Fullam commonly observes the following deficiencies in proposed pretrial memoranda: (1) too much useless, repetitive, boilerplate information; and (2) a reluctance by counsel to concede any issue, even though concession by the end of trial is inevitable." Shannon P. Duffy of Philadelphia's Legal Intelligencer has much more on the case.