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I found this format of a court order to be rather unique. I've never before seen a court order that reproduces a document from the docket (#245), and appends th

I found this format of a court order to be rather unique. I've never before seen a court order that reproduces a document from the docket (#245), and appends the actual order (with no header or anything) to the end.

iudqnolq 4y ago
It's normal[1] to give a judge a proposed order they just have to sign. Judges don't have to care about formatting and headers. Each judge generally gets to write their own rules for how they want lawyers to format filings in their cases. [1] Or at least I often see them when browsing through cases as an interested layperson and I've heard lawyers discussing doing it in a tone that suggests it's the norm.
- jsmith45 4y ago
  Certainly proposed orders are very normal, especially (but not exclusively) if a resolution has been agreed to by both parties (e.g. settlement, or order by mutual stipulation). But this was very much not that. A proposed order would match what was being argued in the attached brief, and this did pretty much the exact opposite, rejecting the arguments in the attached letter.
- mark212 4y ago
  you're right, in fact in California state courts it's required to submit a proposed order with a motion. But no, each judge generally does NOT get to write their own rules of formatting. Districts (at the federal level) go to great lengths to ensure that things are uniform in that jurisdiction, for the ease of the clerk's office. Someone looking at this PDF would likely not immediately know it was an order. State courts are even more uniform, with statewide rules on typeface, font size, margin width, whether something must or can be included in a single document or broken out into a separate filing, number of lines of empty space at the top of a page, etc etc
davidgerard 4y ago
I've seen some that are a letter from one side, and the judge has scribbled a note at the top accepting it and signed that.
mark212 4y ago
I've been practicing for 28 years across the country, admitted in two states and nine federal district courts. I've never seen an order like this and in fact have never seen a judge permit a "letter brief" like the original filing. (I suspect this is an SDNY quirk.) Not saying there's anything improper about it, but it looks really bizarre to me. Why the judge didn't have one of her clerks slap it into a Word document with a short caption and file that on ECF is totally beyond me. And as a matter of style, it seems amateurish and haphazard.

iudqnolq 4y ago

It's normal[1] to give a judge a proposed order they just have to sign. Judges don't have to care about formatting and headers. Each judge generally gets to write their own rules for how they want lawyers to format filings in their cases. [1] Or at least I often see them when browsing through cases as an interested layperson and I've heard lawyers discussing doing it in a tone that suggests it's the norm.

jsmith45 4y ago
Certainly proposed orders are very normal, especially (but not exclusively) if a resolution has been agreed to by both parties (e.g. settlement, or order by mutual stipulation). But this was very much not that. A proposed order would match what was being argued in the attached brief, and this did pretty much the exact opposite, rejecting the arguments in the attached letter.
mark212 4y ago
you're right, in fact in California state courts it's required to submit a proposed order with a motion. But no, each judge generally does NOT get to write their own rules of formatting. Districts (at the federal level) go to great lengths to ensure that things are uniform in that jurisdiction, for the ease of the clerk's office. Someone looking at this PDF would likely not immediately know it was an order. State courts are even more uniform, with statewide rules on typeface, font size, margin width, whether something must or can be included in a single document or broken out into a separate filing, number of lines of empty space at the top of a page, etc etc

davidgerard 4y ago

I've seen some that are a letter from one side, and the judge has scribbled a note at the top accepting it and signed that.

mark212 4y ago

I've been practicing for 28 years across the country, admitted in two states and nine federal district courts. I've never seen an order like this and in fact have never seen a judge permit a "letter brief" like the original filing. (I suspect this is an SDNY quirk.) Not saying there's anything improper about it, but it looks really bizarre to me. Why the judge didn't have one of her clerks slap it into a Word document with a short caption and file that on ECF is totally beyond me. And as a matter of style, it seems amateurish and haphazard.