Opinion
CIVIL ACTION No. 03-2468-CM
March 26, 2004
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter comes before the court on defendants' Motion for Enlargement of Time to Respond to Plaintiff's Summary Judgment Order (Doc. 12). Plaintiff filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment and an injunction to stay arbitration. In the present motion, defendants seek leave from the court to delay their response to plaintiff's pending summary judgment motion until after the court has determined whether the parties' suit must be arbitrated.
Parties enter into arbitration agreements for myriad reasons, but some of the most prominent are the parties' intention to expedite the resolution of disputes and to minimize the substantial costs of litigating a matter in federal court. The court has not yet ruled on plaintiff's motion to stay arbitration, nor on defendants' motion to dismiss and compel arbitration. Ordering defendants to undertake the substantial cost and time of preparing a response to plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, before the court has ruled on the motion to dismiss and compel arbitration, would defeat the purposes underlying agreements to arbitrate. Consequently, the court concludes that defendants are entitled to delay their response to plaintiff's summary judgment motion until after the court rules on defendants' motion to dismiss and compel arbitration. However, in the event that the court denies defendants' motion to dismiss and therefore does not compel arbitration, defendants are ordered to respond to plaintiff's summary judgment motion within 14 days of that order.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that defendants' Motion for Enlargement of Time to Respond to Plaintiff's Summary Judgment Order (Doc. 12) is granted.