MOTION TO EXTEND TIME FOR PARTIES TO SUBMIT ORDER PURSUANT TO DOCKET NO. 82

NANCY J. KOPPE, District Judge.

To further minimize the burden on the judiciary and narrow the issues for consideration by this Court to those ultimately disputed by the parties after a sufficient meet-and-confer period, the parties present this Joint Notice and Motion for Continuance of the deadline for the parties to file their "joint statement regarding each discovery request for which a dispute exists" in accordance with this Court's order (Docket No. 82) ("Order").

In accordance with the Order, Plaintiffs and Equifax met and conferred via email on Tuesday through Thursday, December 19-21, and held a productive telephone conference on Thursday. The parties were unable to confer by telephone on Wednesday due to the unavoidable travel itinerary of lead counsel for one of the parties.

The parties agreed that developments in two discovery processes will inform the scope of the disputed items between the parties for this Court's consideration, if not meaningfully alter the nature of those disputes.

First, the parties are actively working to address Plaintiffs' concerns regarding the Equifax Master Agreement with FIS Card, which Plaintiffs argue "appears to be an incomplete document." Docket No. 75 at 21. They seek "the complete contents of the controlling Master Agreement during the Relevant Time period." Id. Equifax disagrees with the facts as set forth in Plaintiffs' Emergency Motion and disagrees that Plaintiffs were entitled to any of the relief sought in the Emergency Motion. Equifax has conducted a good-faith, reasonable search for documents responsive to Plaintiffs' requests, but it is conducting one final search to accommodate Plaintiffs' requests and has offered to produce authenticating declarations regarding the FIS Master Agreement documents produced to date.

Second, Plaintiffs have served supplemental discovery requests, the responses to which Equifax is due to serve by December 29.

The parties agreed it would be premature for this Court to consider and decide the discovery disputes at issue before permitting developments in these two areas to run their course. The parties believe that it would be more constructive for the parties to continue narrowing and crystallizing the dispute in an effort to make the final joint statement submitted to this Court as narrow as possible.

To that end, the parties propose and stipulate to the following timetable:

The parties do not wish to needlessly postpone resolution of the disputed discovery requests; nor do they wish only to delay their efforts preparing the joint statement in accordance with Docket No. 82. The parties agree that while some disputes may only be resolved or altered after developments in the two areas above, there are some disputed requests that are unlikely to be affected by any developments in the next two weeks. As such, the parties will work diligently until January 5 to draft the sections of the joint statement pertaining to disputes that are unlikely to be meaningfully affected by developments in the next two weeks.

Good cause exists for this extension—namely, to allow the parties additional time to conduct discovery relevant to disputed items raised in Plaintiffs' Motion to Compel, Motion for Leave to File Supplemental Authority, and Motion to Extend Discovery and Reopen Expert Discovery, and in Equifax's responses to them. Moreover, this extension will give the parties time to crystallize and narrow the scope of disputed items to minimize the burden on this Court and target this Court's intervention to intractable disputed issues.

IT IS SO ORDERED.