MEMORANDUM ORDER

MILTON I. SHADUR, Senior District Judge.

This Court is in possession of a proposed Third Amended Complaint ("TAC") that Cafferty Clobes Meriwether & Sprengel, LLP ("Cafferty Clobes") has attached as an exhibit to the supplement that this Court had ordered it to file in its June 27, 2016 order ("Order") that struck Cafferty Clobes' utterly inadequate proposed Second Amended Complaint ("SAC"). That SAC, it will be remembered, both (1) repeated all of the theories of recovery from the First Amended Complaint ("FAC") as to which this Court had ruled any amendment would be futile (and thus would not be permitted) and (2) impermissibly left it to the reader to unravel how the SAC addressed those deficiencies in the FAC's allegations as to which leave to amend had not been withheld.

Because Fed. R. Civ. P. ("Rule") 15(a)(1) permits a party to amend its pleading as a matter of course only once, Cafferty Clobes must now either obtain the written consent of defendant XO Communications Services, LLC ("XO") or seek leave of this Court for any amendment — and as the concluding paragraph of the Order made clear, it was not to be presumed that such leave would be automatic. That reservation has proved prescient, as it is not apparent that leave to file the TAC should be granted even under Rule 15(a)(2)'s liberal standard — an observation based both on a survey of the TAC itself and on the lack of legal rigor that Cafferty Clobes' counsel has already displayed concerning the FAC and SAC.

Thus this Court solicits a response from XO, either consenting to Cafferty Clobes' proposed amendment to its pleading or explaining why leave to amend should be denied. That response is to be submitted no later than August 17, 2016, and a status hearing to determine the next step in this litigation is ordered for 8:45 a.m. August 26, 2016.