Opinion
No. 03 C 994
May 12, 2003
MEMORANDUM ORDER
Because counsel for Christine and David Hirsch (collectively "Hirsches") had failed to comply with the directive contained in this Court's April 15, 2003 memorandum order ("Order I") to file by April 28 "a statement as to reasons if any that the alleged promise to arbitrate should not be complied with," this Court promptly issued an April 29 memorandum order ("Order II") staying this action pursuant to 9 U.S.C. § 3. Order II was premised on the contractual provision requiring such arbitration that had been filed by counsel for Diners Club International, Ltd. ("Diners Club")
Now Hirsches' counsel has belatedly filed a Memorandum Regarding Arbitration challenging the applicability of the document on which Diners Club relies. That Memorandum advances several reasons that call the existence of any agreement to arbitrate into serious question.
Hirsches' counsel offers a wholly unpersuasive reason for his delay in filing. Order I's final paragraph had ordered Diners Club to file a copy of the arbitration document "on or before April 28, 2003." In the very next sentence Hirsches were ordered to file their statement of reasons "[w]ithin the same time period." Hirsches counsel says he somehow understood that order as giving him 13 days after the Diners Club filing (he used the interval between the April 15 issuance of Order I and the April 28 outside date for the Diners Club filing as the source of that 13-day assumption). Needless to say, this Court knows quite well how to state a deadline date or a time interval if it wants to. Because the Diners Club order was framed in terms of a filing "on or before" a specified date, the use of "within the same time period" in the next sentence plainly referred back to the identical due date. But fortunately for Hirsches, their counsel's current filing has done better in substantive terms than in his reading of Order I.
Accordingly, without expressing any ultimate view on the subject, this Court must necessarily vacate Order II — and it does. No stay of this action will be in effect until further order of court. Instead, Diners Club's counsel is ordered to file a memorandum in response to Hirsches' Memorandum on or before May 22, 2003, and the subject will be addressed at the previously-set May 29, 2003 status hearing date.