ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR COPY OF CM/ECF FILE (Doc. 110)

SHEILA K. OBERTO, Magistrate Judge.

Plaintiff Andrew R. Lopez ("Plaintiff"), a state prisoner proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, filed this civil rights action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and California law on September 10, 2010. This action is proceeding on Plaintiff's amended complaint, filed on March 23, 2012, against Defendants Garcia, Zamora, Espinosa, Jackson, Drew, Olmedo, Munoz, Fields, White, Rousseau, Martinez, Beer, Gray, Beard, and Gipson ("Defendants") for violating Plaintiff's rights under federal and state law. Plaintiff's claims arise out of his conditions of confinement at California State Prison, Corcoran in Corcoran, California.

On June 12, 2014, Plaintiff filed a motion seeking a copy of the CM/ECF1 system file for this case and for copies of future CM/ECF filings as they are filed, with Defendants' counsel to bear the expense. (Doc. 110). Defendants filed an opposition on June 26, 2014, with respect to bearing the burden of any expense, and Plaintiff filed a reply on July 10, 2014. (Docs. 171, 123.)

The Eastern District of California is a CM/ECF district and Defendants' counsel is required to file documents electronically. Local Rule 133(a). Pro se litigants such as Plaintiff are not permitted to use the CM/ECF system and they must submit paper documents, which are filed, scanned into the CM/ECF system, and docketed by the Clerk's Office. Local Rule 133(b)(2).

Plaintiff asserts that his lack of access to CM/ECF prejudices him with respect to the Court's and Defendants' practice of citing to CM/ECF page numbers, and he seeks CM/ECF copies from the case file to ameliorate this prejudice, at defense counsel's expense.

Plaintiff's proposition that he is prejudiced in this respect lacks merit. CM/ECF pagination is not unduly confusing. Each document entry is merely paginated consecutively. Some documents, such as Defendants' motion for summary judgment, have attachments and each attachment is separately paginated consecutively.2 Furthermore, lack of undue confusion aside, there is no requirement that citations correspond to CM/ECF pagination. To the contrary, courts and parties are not bound to a particular case-file document citation method, so long as the citation method allows for reasonable identification of the cited material.

While it might be easier or simpler for Plaintiff to possess a copy of his file with documents bearing the CM/ECF pagination headers, his assertion of prejudice is unfounded and there is no justification for what would amount to an extraordinary deviation from applicable Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Eastern District of California Local Rules. Plaintiff is served with all orders issued by the Court, and Defendants are required to serve him with paper copies of documents they file in this case. Fed. R. Civ. P. 5; Local Rules 133, 135. If Plaintiff believes he did not receive a document that was served or if he is served with an incomplete document, he may bring the omission to the Court's attention and request that the Court rectify it. However, Plaintiff is not entitled to a copy of the CM/ECF case file for pagination purposes.

Accordingly, for the reasons set forth herein, Plaintiff's motion is DENIED.

IT IS SO ORDERED.