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Remember that post from Friday which detailed efforts by RRA lawyers Steve Lippman and Riley Cirulnick to get an emergency enlargement of upcoming deadlines in a matter pending before Judge Cooke?

If you'll recall, Matthew S. Nelles at Ruden McClosky opposed the requested enlargement, basically arguing that the discovery deadlines date back to April and the RRA lawyers were dilatory in a number of respects and should have completed the discovery well before the whole Scott Rothstein stuff broke.

(Matt, if I missed something please feel free to chime in).

Well here comes the reply, filed Monday, which provides further insight into the difficulties faced by the RRA lawyers still at that firm trying to service clients:

GFM is accurate that ACE/Mr. Bennett/Ebway's counsel was "incommunicado" for the period their firm was undergoing this upheaval. Response at p.1. This is precisely why the extensions sought are appropriate. A receiver was appointed and questions about what counsel could and could not do had to be addressed. The computers were down; no email, no word processing, no research capability. Counsel are looking for new homes and making arrangements to move there. The short extensions sought under these circumstances are more than justified.

In a footnote these lawyers also note that Monday, the day of this filing, RRA's "entire computer system (including emails and phone) were disabled for approximately 2-3 hours."

Incidentally, it looks from the certificate of service that Steve and Riley landed or are landing over at Arthur Rice's firm.

Good luck fellas.

Oh, I almost forgot -- I managed to unearth a rare photograph of me taken with Scott and Kim Rothstein at an event we all attended last year.

Enjoy!

UPDATE -- Judge Cooke granted and denied the motion in part. She granted the enlargement as to the summary judgment deadline, but agreed with Matt as to the discovery deadlines, finding no causal relationship between the Scott Rothstein fiasco and failing to complete discovery within the court-ordered deadlines.