Opinion
No. 03 C 5432.
April 21, 2004
MEMORANDUM OPINION
This matter comes before the court on Plaintiff Susan Tumas's ("Tumas") motion for reconsideration of our ruling granting Defendant Ameriquest Mortgage Company's ("Ameriquest") Motion for Protective Order. For the reasons set forth below, we deny the motion for reconsideration.
BACKGROUND
On August 5, 2003, Tumas filed suit against her lender Ameriquest, alleging violations of the Illinois Interest Act, 815 ILCS § 205/4(2)(a). Tumas claims that Ameriquest improperly attached a prepayment penalty to a loan on which the annual rate of interest exceeds eight percent. On September 24, 2003, we provided the parties with a three month discovery period that would close on December 23, 2003. At a status hearing on December 23, 2003, Tumas moved to extend discovery so that she could depose Ameriquest employees with knowledge regarding "a key factual issue in this case . . . precisely when the loan was approved." Pl. Agreed Mot., Jan. 20, 2004 (emphasis in original). Apparently, an earlier deponent produced by Ameriquest was not the person who had approved Tumas' loan. We granted Tumas's motion and extended discovery to January 28, 2004. On January 19, 2004, Ameriquest faxed a letter to Tumas disclosing the two former employees who were involved in approving Tumas' loan. Because of the parties' uncertainty in their ability to depose the two employees before the revised cut-off date, the parties agreed to seek an extension of the discovery cut-off date "for the purpose of allowing plaintiff to depose the former employees of [Ameriquset] who approved [Tumas'] loan." Pl. Letter, Jan. 20, 2004. On January 22, 2004, we granted Tumas's agreed motion to extend discovery until March 2, 2004 "to allow plaintiff to depose the former employees who approved plaintiff's loan." Pl. Agreed Mot., Jan 20, 2004.
On January 29, Tumas served Ameriquest with a Notice of 30(b)(6) Deposition, seeking to depose Ameriquest's "[e]mployee(s) most familiar with Ameriquest procedures for enclosing and mailing the required pre-closing loan disclosures, including adjustable-rate disclosures, to an applicant/borrower." The next day, Tumas served Ameriquest with Supplemental Discovery Requests consisting of one interrogatory, one request for admission, and one request for document product. All three requests focused on one factual issue of when certain variable interest rate disclosures were mailed by Ameriquest to Tumas. Tumas has repeatedly referred to this question as "the central factual issue in this case," because whether and when Ameriquest mailed the disclosures is relevant to the applicability of the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act of 1982 ("AMTPA"), 12 U.S.C. § 3802. Even though Tumas has come to consider this issue paramount to her case, it was apparently not addressed during the original or first-extended discovery periods via interrogatories, document or admission request, or deposition notice.
Upon receiving Tumas' Supplemental Discovery Request and 30(b)(6) motion, Ameriquest filed a Motion for Protective Order, on February 11, 2004, seeking to bar Tumas' new line of inquiry. Ameriquest argued that Tumas's new requests were outside the scope of discovery that Tumas had sought in her previous motions to extend discovery. Tumas responded that she had previously sought to glean answers to this "central factual issue" from the Ameriquest employees who had approved her loan — the two employees whose deposition were the basis of our decision to extend discovery until March 2, 2000 — but that their deposition revealed that they had no knowledge regarding the mailing of the disclosures at issue. On February 18, 2004, in open court, we granted Ameriquest's protective order motion. We explained to Tumas that the discovery extension had been allowed for a limited purpose, for the deposition of the two former employees identified by Ameriquest on January 19, 2003, and that Tumas's new discovery requests were outside of the extended discovery's narrowly defined scope. On March 16, 2004, Tumas filed the present motion to reconsider our February 18, 2004, ruling.
LEGAL STANDARD
Even though the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ("Rules") do not officially recognize a pleading called "motion to reconsider," courts generally construe such requests as being brought under Rule 59(e) or under Rule 60(b). Walker v. Abbott Laboratories, 340 F.3d 471, 475 (7th Cir. 2003). All motions to reconsider filed more than ten days after the entry of judgment, including Tumas' present motion, are treated as Rule 60(b) motions. Donald v. Cook County Sheriff's Dept., 95 F.3d 548, 553 (7th Cir. 1996); Amp-Rite Elec. Co., Inc. v. Int'l Brotherhood of Elec. Workers, 2000 WL 1368038, *1 (N.D. Ill. 2000). "Motions for reconsideration serve a limited function: to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence." Publishers Res., Inc. v. Walker-Davis Publ'ns, Inc., 762 F.2d 557, 561 (7th Cir. 1985). Such motions should not be used to rehash old arguments or to present new legal arguments or facts that should have been offered during the pendency of the underlying motion. Amp-Rite at *1 (citingQuaker Alloy Casting Co. v. Gulfco Indus., Inc., 123 F.R.D. 282, 288 (N.D. Ill. 1988). Rather, relief under Rule 60(b) is "an extraordinary remedy that is to be granted only in exceptional circumstances." Provident Savings Bank v. Popovich, 71 F.3d 696, 698 (7th Cir. 1995). Grounds for relief under a Rule 60(b) motion include "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; fraud, misrepresentation or other misconduct by an adverse party; or for any other reason justifying relief from judgment." Tobel v. City of Hammond, 94 F.3d 360, 361 (7th Cir. 1996); F.R.C.P. 60(b). A 60(b) motion should be granted only when the movant demonstrates the existence of "a substantial danger that the underlying judgment was unjust." Dickerson v. Bd. of Educ. of Ford Heights Ill., 32 F.3d 1114, 1116 (7th Cir. 1994). The decision of whether to grant or deny a Rule60(b) is within the sound discretion of the district court. Camp v. Gregory, 67 F.3d 1286, 1290 (7th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct 2498 (1196). With these considerations in mind we now address Tumas' motion.
DISCUSSION
Tumas' motion for reconsideration asks us to reverse our prior ruling which found that her discovery requests as to the mailing of the disclosures were outside the scope of the limited extended discovery. She makes essentially the identical argument utilized in her response to Ameriquest's protective order motion. Tumas contends that whether and when the variable interest rate disclosures were mailed by Ameriquest is the critical question in this dispute, as the mailing date determines whether her loan transaction is governed by AMPTA. Even though this information may be important for Tumas' case, we granted the two discovery cut-off extensions for the express purpose of allowing Tumas to depose the two Ameriquest employees who approved her loan, not to open channels for additional investigation. While Tumas claims that "[i]t is not for want of diligence that plaintiff's counsel did not, earlier in the case, seek to depose the employee who mailed the disclosure," Pl. Mot. to Reconsider, her only explanation for delaying her inquiry into the subject until the second extended discovery period is that she thought she would get the desired information from the employees who had approved the loan. In spite of Tumas's diligence earlier in the case, she neglected to specifically seek discovery on her alleged central factual issue until the second extended discovery. Especially considering the purported primacy of the information sought by Tumas, she had ample opportunity to ask the appropriate questions during the initial three-month discovery period. As such, we stand by our previous decision that Ameriquest's protective order was merited as Tumas' discovery requests at issue fell well outside the scope of the extended limited discovery period.