Trials & Litigation
Legal professionals copied components of transient, determined to ‘double down on imprudence’ by repeating dropping arguments, choose alleges
June 24, 2025, 12:31 pm CDT
Legal professionals representing a meals firm are going through doable sanctions for submitting a movement to dismiss stated to largely copy complete sections of a short filed by one other regulation agency with arguments that didn’t succeed. (Picture from Shutterstock)
Legal professionals representing a meals firm are going through doable sanctions for submitting a movement to dismiss stated to largely copy complete sections of a short filed by one other regulation agency with arguments that didn’t succeed.
In a June 16 order to point out trigger, U.S. District Choose Noel Smart of the Northern District of California requested attorneys representing the Neil Jones Meals Co. to suggest the sanctions that they deem to be acceptable.
The “most obvious signal” of the “sweeping copy and paste” was the transient’s reference to the plaintiff within the prior case, Smart stated. And the opposing attorneys who famous the copying have been additionally the opposing attorneys within the prior case.
The meals firm’s transient included “a minimum of a dozen paragraphs which might be substantively an identical and close to word-for-word duplicates” of the prior transient, based on Smart’s comparability.
She additionally discovered it “mystifying why a celebration would double down on imprudence by reproducing a dropping transient.”
The Neil Jones Meals Co. transient sought dismissal of a lawsuit looking for damages for noxious odors. The transient and the doc that it copied questioned whether or not pure financial loss can assist a negligence declare in California. Within the prior case, “the courtroom discovered for plaintiffs at each juncture with caselaw and evaluation that apply with equal power right here,” Smart stated.
Smart adopted the prior opinion and denied the movement to dismiss. She scheduled a July 28 listening to on the order to point out trigger.
“Passing off one other’s concepts as one’s personal is unacceptable in a first-year faculty class and might result in failing grade and even expulsion,” she wrote, citing from one other case. “Doing so whereas engaged within the skilled follow of regulation is worse and is each feckless and embarrassing.”
The attorneys representing the Neil Jones Meals Co. are Steven C. Clark and David J. Weiland of Coleman & Horowitt in California. On recommendation of counsel, their agency will not be commenting right now, Weiland informed the ABA Journal in an e mail.
Hat tip to lawyer Robert Freund, who posted the order to point out trigger on X (previously Twitter).
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