On Tuesday of this week, the parties in the Zuffa Antitrust Lawsuit filed its Discovery Plan and Scheduling Order. The order is a result of the Motion to Compel and Motion to Quash earlier this month.
The order extends fact discovery to July 31, 2017. Expert reports and expert deposition will go through the fall of 2017 with all expert reports in by 2017. Class certification, the motion to determine whether or not the lawsuit will be a class action will commence on January 26, 2018 and the hearing on class certification will occur on the Court’s convenience.
Summary Judgment motions, motions that could dismiss the case, will be due on July 9, 2018. Opposition to the motions will be due a month later, on August 8, 2018 and Reply Briefs will not be due until a month later, September 17, 2018.
You can expect dispositive motions (Summary Judgment) to occur with both sides filing something either the UFC dismissing all of Plaintiffs’ claims or Plaintiffs filing summary judgment on the UFC’s defense or defenses. Both sides will likely request oral argument and sometime thereafter there should be a ruling. Either the Court will grant or deny or issues partial granting or denial of certain issues.
After that, there will likely be a trial in the late fall of 2018 or early 2019. Of course, recall that it took over a year for Judge Richard Boulware to issue a written opinion. So, the timeline may be longer dependent on when the Court issues a ruling. There’s really no hard deadline for the Court to issue an opinion, so this could take some time.
With fact discovery extended until July 31, 2017, it appears that new discovery (i.e., written interrogatories, request for production of documents, etc.) can be served. Zuffa had argued that Plaintiffs should not have the opportunity to request additional discovery.
Discovery Plan 06.13.17 by JASONCRUZ206 on Scribd
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