Opinion
CASE NO. 3:10-cv-295-J-34TEM.
June 17, 2011
ORDER
This case is before the Court on Defendant's Motion for Extension of Expert Deadline (Doc. #25, Motion for Extension), filed June 6, 2011. Upon review of the instant motion, the Court shortened the response period to the close of business on Monday, June 13, 2011. To date, no response has been filed. Thus, there is no opposition in the record to the relief sought by the instant motion. Defendant seeks an enlargement of Defendant's expert disclosure deadline to thirty days from the date of the order ruling on the Motion for Extension. As reason for the sought extension, Defendant cites information learned on or about May 12, 2011 from a functional capacity exam performed on Plaintiff in early April (Doc. #25 at 2). Defendant maintains this additional information requires further evaluation by an expert and Defendant's expert deadline expired on April 15, 2011, before Defendant received the functional capacity exam report.
See Local Rule 1.01(c), wherein the Court may suspend application and enforcement of the local rules in whole or in part in the interests of justice.
Rule 6 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that enlargements of time after expiration of a deadline may be sought by motion and granted by the court if "after the time has expired . . . the party failed to act because of excusable neglect." Fed.R.Civ.P. 6(b)(1)(B). This Court has likened excusable neglect to "some showing of good faith on the part of the party seeking enlargement and some reasonable basis for noncompliance within the time specified." Wilson v. Transworld Systems, Inc., No. 5:00-CV-135-OC-10, 2000 WL 1310658 (M.D. Fla. 2001) quoting Williams v. Publix Warehouse, 151 F.R.D. 428, 431 (M.D. Fla. 1993). The undersigned finds the late discovery of information relevant to key issues in this case satisfies the excusable neglect standard of Rule 6.
Accordingly, Defendant's Motion for Extension of Expert Deadline (Doc. #25) is GRANTED. Defendant's expert deadline is enlarged through July 18, 2011. The granting of this motion shall not serve as the basis for requests to enlarge other deadlines established in the governance of this case.
DONE AND ORDERED at Jacksonville, Florida this 16th day of June, 2011.