STIPULATED MOTION AND [PROPOSED] ORDER TO CONTINUE DISCOVERY CUT-OFF DEADLINE

JAMES L. ROBART, District Judge.

I. STIPULATION

The parties to this action, by and through their undersigned counsel of record, hereby jointly request an extension of the discovery related deadlines. The parties, do not seek a continuance of the trial date or trial-related deadlines. The parties have exceptional good cause to request relief from the current discovery deadline because the parties, after already conducting substantial written discovery and exchanging nearly 15,000 documents, agree that a private mediation is now necessary to see if the parties can resolve the dispute informally before completing costly depositions that will require travel across the entire country. The parties explain in more detail below:

1. Plaintiff Puget Sound Surgical Center filed this action against Aetna Life Insurance Company and twelve named health plans as defendants. Plaintiff's First Amended Complaint seeks additional payment for medical services rendered in connection with bariatric weight loss surgery, among other procedures. (Dkt. 1 and 83). Plaintiff produced claim spreadsheets and documents identifying the underlying claims for health benefits at issue in this matter. The materials Plaintiff produced identify 688 underlying claims involving 65 different health plans. In total, Plaintiff produced 1,165 pages of documents.

2. Upon receipt of the Plaintiff's documents and spreadsheets, Aetna promptly began the process of gathering the applicable health benefit plan documents and claim file materials for the 688 underlying claims at issue. Due to the large number of claims and sensitive nature of the information contained the documents, this process took far longer than originally anticipated and ultimately lead to the parties having to request a trial continuance. (Dkt. 75 and 79.)

3. Ultimately, Aetna produced more than 12,000 documents to date. These documents produced were reviewed for relevance, privilege, and ensuring that all HIPAA and personal health information was redacted. Aetna is in the process of gathering additional documents and will be producing those as soon as possible. Aetna anticipates producing several thousand more plan related documents.

4. Plaintiff propounded Interrogatories, Requests for Production, and Requests for Admission on Aetna as well as each plan defendant. Aetna has also propounded Interrogatories, Requests for Admission, and Requests for Production. Generally, the written discovery seeks information related to the 688 underlying claims and the plans involved in this litigation, which makes responding to the requests a very time-consuming task. Aetna has responded to the written discovery and the parties have met and conferred regarding those responses. Plaintiff anticipates that substantial time will be spent responding to Aetna's discovery as well.

5. The parties have been working together cooperatively to conduct the discovery in this matter as efficiently as is practicable. This includes working together to schedule depositions for representatives of Aetna and Puget Sound Surgical Center. These depositions are going to take place all over the United States and involves one witness who is currently in India. The parties have discussed dates for the depositions and during that process agreed that before substantial time and money is expended taking depositions in Hartford, New York, Seattle, among other locations, mediation should be conducted to see if an informal resolution can be reached.

6. The parties have agreed to mediate this matter in the week of April 27 through May 3, 2019 and are in the process of selecting a mediator. In an effort to conserve resources that may not need to be expended to finish discovery and depositions by the current discovery deadline of April 1, the parties request that the Court continue the following discovery related deadlines to the following dates:

7. Under these unique circumstances, where a large number of claims are at issue, a tremendous amount of information has already been exchanged, and the parties would like to mediate before incurring additional expenses to complete discovery and take depositions, good cause exists for an extension of the discovery cut-off deadlines as requested above. Additionally, the parties believe that they can be ready for trial as set for September 16, 2019 if they are not able to resolve the case informally in the agreed to mediation.

8. The parties have made this request in a timely manner, as the discovery cut-off is not until April 1, 2019.

II. ORDER

The Court hereby finds that good cause exists to grant the requested relief and that an extension of the discovery cut-off and expert disclosure deadlines are necessary due to the exceptional circumstances of agreeing to conduct mediation before proceeding with expensive discovery that may not prove necessary. The discovery cut-off deadline is hereby extended and the case schedule set forth in the Court's August 14, 2018 Order is hereby amended as follows:

The remaining trial and pre-trial deadlines shall remain the same as set forth in the Court's August 14, 2018 Order. The parties should understand that the court is disinclined to extend another case deadlines.

IT IS SO ORDERD.