RECOMMENDATION OF UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

KATHLEEN M. TAFOYA, Magistrate Judge.

This case comes before the court on amendment of the discovery deadlines in this case and consideration of a recommendation that the District Court consider vacating the currently scheduled trial in favor of resetting in the early part of —.

This court heard oral argument on "Plaintiffs' Motion to Compel Discovery From Defendant by a Date Certain and Request for a Fourth Extension of Expert Witness Deadlines" [Doc. No. 65] on May 16, 2012. At that time the parties orally addressed the impending discovery deadlines.

On March 16, 2012, the plaintiffs were allowed to file an Amended Complaint. See First Amended Complaint and Jury Demand [Doc. No. 56]. With the filing of that Amended Complaint, the case went from a single allegation of copyright infringement associated with a June 7, 2011 work to a complaint alleging hundreds of copyright violations of multiple copyrighted works spanning a ten year publication period. Id.

Since that time, this court has addressed several requests for extension of various discovery dates in the case, see Minute Order dated April 11, 2012 [Doc. No. 64] and Minute Order dated March 16, 2012 [Doc. No. 57], and has addressed several discovery disputes arising from the greatly magnified claims. During the course of the hearings, this court has become aware that over the time period of the alleged copyright violations, the defendant Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, f/k/a Wachovia Capital Markets, LLC, (hereinafter "Wells Fargo") has been involved in multiple mergers and acquisitions which bear on certain of the copyright infringement claims herein. The sheer volume of electronic discovery which has been occasioned by the Amended Complaint and the difficulty involved in retrieving emails and other relevant documents from company servers where the companies, in some instances, no longer exist, has proved challenging at the least. This is especially true considering that certain alleged infringements were accomplished by the forwarding of emails containing the alleged copyrighted works to persons who no longer are working for Wells Fargo and who may have never actually worked for Wells Fargo. Searching for discoverable information has involved utilizing third-party software which is no longer functional and has required that special databases be prepared by outside vendors at considerable cost to the parties and considerable time expended.

This court has concluded that the present discovery deadlines are no longer workable given the broad scope of relevant evidence for the hundreds of alleged copyright violations and in spite of the parties' diligent efforts to timely comply with the previously established deadlines.

Additionally, given the significant expansion of the case, the parties are now seeking a trial period of between eight and ten days.

WHEREFORE, for the foregoing reasons, I respectfully RECOMMENDED that the District Court vacate its currently scheduled trial now set to commence on September 24, 2012 at 8:30 a.m. and its previously set Trial Preparation Conference set for September 7, 2012 at 3:00 p.m. and that a new trial be set no earlier than March, —.

It is further RECOMMENDED that should the District Court agree with re-setting the trial date in this matter, the following new discovery deadlines be imposed:

ADVISEMENT REGARDING OBJECTIONS TO THIS RECOMMENDATION

The parties have been consulted by this court as to all recommended dates and have agreed to the proposed discovery schedule, including re-setting the trial. The parties have advised they will file no objections to this Court's recommendations herein.