AMENDED STIPULATION AND ORDER EXTENDING PENDING DATES

JOHN A. MENDEZ, District Judge.

1. On August 10, 2016, Defendant Ford Motor Company removed this action from the Superior Court of California for the County of Trinity to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.

2. On December 5, 2016, the Court granted in part, and denied in part, Ford's motion to dismiss the action.

3. On December 21, 2016, Plaintiff filed his second amended complaint.

4. On January 4, 2017, the Court issued its Status (Pre-Trial Scheduling) Order, setting various discovery deadlines and trial for May 21, 2018.

5. On September 29, 2017, the Court granted the Parties' Stipulation and Order Extending Pending Dates by 60 Days, adjusting discovery deadlines and setting trial for July 20, 2018.

6. Since that time, the parties have engaged in discovery cooperatively. Ford served and Plaintiff has responded to special interrogatories and requests for production, and Ford has recently served additional written discovery, to which Plaintiff will soon respond. Plaintiff served multiple sets of requests for admission, special interrogatories, and requests for production to which Ford has responded. Ford has deposed Plaintiff, who was the passenger in the vehicle, Mark Suda, the driver of the vehicle, Kyle Martin, a friend of Plaintiff, Tiffany Cato, Plaintiff's partner, and the California Highway Patrol officer who responded to the incident. Plaintiff took the depositions of three Ford company witnesses named in Ford's initial disclosures and amended disclosures as persons with knowledge of the subject matter of the lawsuit. The parties agreed to a medical examination of Plaintiff by a doctor retained by Ford without the necessity of motion.

7. The parties have also exchanged initial and supplemental expert reports according to the existing case schedule. Ford disclosed and provided reports for five expert witnesses on December 18, 2018, and provided one additional supplemental expert report from a previously identified expert on January 8, 2018. Plaintiff disclosed and provided reports for five expert witnesses on December 18, 2018, and subsequently provided two supplemental expert reports by previously identified experts.

8. The parties are working together to schedule the depositions of nine of the ten disclosed experts, a task complicated both by the fact that the experts are scattered around the country in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, in addition to various locations in California, and the fact that plaintiff's counsel is in trial for most of February 2018. Currently, there are more expert witnesses to depose than there are available days in the month. The parties would benefit from additional time in which to arrange those depositions.

9. The primary reason for this requested change in the schedule is the unavailability of one of Ford's trial counsel for the scheduled trial date in July. Mr. Kelly does volunteer work every year building houses in Mexico, and unfortunately, when Ford agreed to the prior request to amend the case schedule, it inadvertently agreed to a new trial date that conflicts with that longstanding commitment. Once the conflict was discovered, the parties worked together to find a mutually agreeable time in which to conduct the trial. In doing so, it became apparent that various key counsel and/or expert witnesses necessary for the trial had conflicts for each appropriate block of time between August 2018 and January 2019. As such, the parties respectfully request that the Court grant the requested extension of the schedule to accommodate a February 2019 trial date.

10. The Parties submitted a Stipulation and [Proposed] Order Extending Pending Dates on February 1, 2018, laying out a proposed new schedule. In response to that filing, the Court requested that the Parties consider modifying two of the proposed dates and times, which they have done.

11. The Parties accordingly stipulate and respectfully request that this Court consider the foregoing as good cause to amend the existing Pre-Trial Scheduling Order to continue all pending dates as described below. The proposed schedule also factors in the various dates on which key counsel will be unavailable to participate in pre-trial proceedings:

Respectfully submitted,

Pursuant to Stipulation, it is so ordered.