Opinion
No. 01 C 5693
September 19, 2001
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Defendant Charles Smith ("Smith"), acting through North Carolina counsel, has filed his Answer and Counterclaim to the Complaint brought against him by Business Electronic Soldering Technologies, Inc. ("BEST"). Although that pleading has not conformed to this District Court's LR 10.1, which requires a paragraph-by-paragraph summary of each allegation of a complaint (normally handled by copying each of its paragraphs) followed by each response, this Court will not send Smith's counsel back to the drawing board for that purpose. That provision is of course intended to facilitate the adversary's and the court's ability to see just what is and what is not being either admitted or put in issue without having to flip back and forth between the two pleadings, but given the bulk of BEST's Complaint this Court will not impose that burden on out-of-state counsel (who was undoubtedly unfamiliar with the requirement).
But the same is not true of counsel's repeated noncompliance with the straightforward roadmap provided by the second sentence of Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(b) when a party is unable either to admit or to deny an allegation but still seeks the benefit of a deemed denial — see App. ¶ 1 to State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Riley, 199 F.R.D. 276, 279 (N.D. Ill. 2001). That noncompliance requires a recasting of Answer ¶¶ 2, 4, 5, 8-10, 16, 17, 26-31, 40 and 43. Unless Smith's asserted lack of information does not suffice to form a belief as to the truth of a particular BEST's allegation (a demanding standard), it is inappropriate for him or his counsel to invoke that standard.
Accordingly Smith is ordered to file an appropriate amendment to the Answer in this Court's chambers (with a copy of course to be transmitted to BEST's counsel) on or before October 1, 2001. This Court retains the next telephonic status hearing date of November 2, 2001.