CA1: What happens when you don’t respond to motions

ITC v. Odom, No. 06-1616 upolds the validity of the District of Maine’s Local Rule 7(b) which provides:

Unless within twenty (20) days after the filing of a motion, the opposing party files written objection thereto, incorporating a memorandum of law, the opposing party shall be deemed to have waived objection.

Keep reading. For safety.

In this case, a party faced with a motion to dismiss under FRCP 12(b)(6) submitted a motion to transfer. The District Court granted the motion to dismiss as unopposed and dismissed the case. The First concludes that 12(b)(6) is nothing like 56 (which can’t be granted based on a failure to respond), because “nothing in its texts compels the court to apply any particular standard in deciding whether to grant or deny a motion.

 The First also rejects the defendants argument that they should have been granted relief due to excusable neglect. However, the plaintiffs didn’t really move under FRCP 60(b), but rather filed “a motion to transfer venue in which, rather than objecting to the Rule 12(b)(6) motion, it asserted that it ‘intend[ed] to file an amended complaint as a matter of right.’” Obviously, this goes nowhere.

Finally, they made a strange argument that the court had jurisdiction to “dismiss the tort” claims (but not the contract claims) against the defendants. But the First points out that a magistrate “recommended that the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction be denied in its entirety as to appellees and the district court so ordered.” Therefore, they had to respond to the complaint in its entirety.