HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018CV149 - SUTHERLAND V. CITY OF FORT COLLINS, STEVE MILLER & IRENE JOSEY - 060 - CITY'S RESPONSE TO PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR CORRECTION OF RECORD IN ADVANCE OF APPEALDISTRICT COURT, LARIMER COUNTY, COLORADO
Court Address: 201 LA Porte Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80521
Phone Number: (970) 494-3500
▲COURT USE ONLY▲
Plaintiff:
ERIC SUTHERLAND, pro se
v.
Defendant:
THE CITY OF FORT COLLINS, a home rule municipality in
the State of Colorado; STEVE MILLER, in his capacity as the
Larimer County Assessor and all successors in this office;
IRENE JOSEY, in her capacity as the Larimer County
Treasurer and all successors to this office; and
Indispensable Parties:
THE TIMNATH DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY, an Urban
Renewal Authority; and COMPASS MORTGAGE
CORPORATION, an Alabama company doing business in
Colorado.
Attorneys for Defendant City of Fort Collins
John W. Mill (#22348)
Amanda Levin Milgrom (#47871)
Sherman & Howard L.L.C.
633 17th Street, Suite 3000
Denver, CO 80202
Phone Number: (303) 297-2900
Email: jmill@shermanhoward.com
amilgrom@shermanhoward.com
Carrie M. Daggett, #23316
John R. Duval, #10185
Fort Collins City Attorney’s Office
300 LaPorte Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80522-0580
Phone Number: (970) 221-6520
cddaggett@fcgov.com
jduval@fcgov.com
Case No.: 2018CV149
Courtroom/Division: 3C
CITY OF FORT COLLINS’ RESPONSE TO PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR
CORRECTION OF THE RECORD IN ADVANCE OF APPEAL
DATE FILED: October 16, 2018 3:00 PM
FILING ID: 4347F7219499B
CASE NUMBER: 2018CV149
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The City of Fort Collins (the “City”), by and through its counsel, Sherman & Howard
L.L.C. and the Fort Collins City Attorney’s Office, submits this City of Fort Collins’ Response
to Plaintiff’s Motion for Correction of the Record in Advance of Appeal (“Motion”), and states
as follows:
I. PLAINTIFF’S MOTION SHOULD BE DENIED
Plaintiff requests that the Court order the “Clerk of Courts [to] review the documents in
the record of this case to determine if any documents have included extraneous pages as a
consequence of scanning in paper submissions.” Motion at 3. Essentially, Plaintiff is asking the
Court and the Clerk to spend tedious hours reviewing all of Plaintiff’s filings in this case because
he chose to file some papers with extraneous material on the back of some pages. Plaintiff’s
Motion should be denied for three reasons:
• Plaintiff has failed to identify any specific filing that purportedly contains “extraneous”
pages.
• Plaintiff’s request would place an undue and unnecessary burden on the Court and the Clerk.
• Removing “extraneous” pages is not necessary and might improperly alter the substance of
the record.
For these reasons, the Court should deny Plaintiff’s Motion and leave the record as is.
II. PLAINTIFF’S MOTION IS AMBIGUOUS
Plaintiff’s Motion is ambiguous. Plaintiff fails to identify which filings (never mind
which pages within those filings) contain any “extraneous pages.”1
Instead, he places the burden
1 Plaintiff’s explanation of “extraneous pages” is not clear. The City understands him to be saying that he
sometimes prints his filings on paper that already has been printed on one side. When he provides such pages to the
Clerk (containing his filings related to this case on one side and unrelated matter on the other side), he believes that
both pages sometimes were scanned and therefore some of his filings may contain pages that are unrelated to the
case. The City has not seen any evidence of this but believes this is the Plaintiff’s concern.
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on both the Court and the Clerk to review all twenty-eight of his filings in this case, page by
page, to determine whether any of his filings contain “extraneous pages.”
This would be a challenging task. The City, at least, is not sure what Plaintiff is talking
about. In response to Plaintiff’s conferral email, the City requested that Plaintiff clarify which
pages or documents he is talking about. However, he failed to do so, denying both the City and
the Court the opportunity to understand Plaintiff’s request. For the Court to grant a motion such
as this one, the movant would have to specify to the Court—at a minimum—which specific
filings contain specifically-identified extraneous pages. Then, and only then, could the Court,
the Clerk and the parties know what pages Plaintiff is asking to be reviewed and determine if
they are in fact “extraneous.”
III. PLAINTIFF’S REQUEST PLACES TOO MUCH OF A BURDEN ON THE
COURT AND THE CLERK
Second, the Court should deny Plaintiffs’ Motion because it places too much of an
administrative burden on the Court and the Clerk. The impetus for Plaintiff filing his Motion is
that Plaintiff filed papers with the Court that apparently had extraneous writing on the back of
the page. Plaintiff asserts that some of those back pages apparently were scanned and included
in the filings that appear on ICCES. Upon recognizing these mistakes, Plaintiff asks the Court
and the Clerk to spend numerous hours poring over all of his filings to identify and correct these
mistakes. Plaintiff takes no responsibility for his actions. For example, he could review all of
his filings, identify the filings and corresponding page numbers that he believes contain these
extraneous pages, and submit copies of those specific pages of those specific filings to this
Court. But, he did not. Instead, he asks the Court and the Clerk to conduct the same review
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without the benefit of knowing what they are looking for. This is an unfair request of the
Plaintiff to make on the Court’s limited resources.
IV. REMOVING “EXTRANEOUS” PAGES IS NOT NECESSARY AND
COULD MISTAKENLY ALTER THE RECORD
Finally, removing “extraneous” pages from Plaintiff’s filings is not necessary. There is
no claim or suggestion that any of Plaintiff’s motions, responses or other filings or any of
Plaintiff’s arguments were inadvertently omitted from the record. All of Plaintiff’s arguments
are in the record. If there also are some extra pages in the record, Plaintiff has not identified how
that is a problem.
Moreover, Plaintiff’s failure to identify any filings with “extraneous” pages creates a risk
that pages that should remain part of the record might inadvertently be removed. Plaintiff’s
Motion provides the Clerk with no guidance whatsoever as to what to look for or what to remove
as unrelated to the record. There is a risk, given the lack of clarity of Plaintiff’s request, the
Clerk might unintentionally remove pages from Plaintiff’s filings that should remain in the
record. This illustrates that Plaintiff’s request is inappropriate.
V. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the City respectfully requests that the Court deny Plaintiff’s
Motion and allow the record in this case to remain as is.
Dated this 16th
day of October, 2018.
SHERMAN & HOWARD L.L.C.
By: /s/ John W. Mill
John W. Mill (#22348)
Amanda Levin Milgrom (#47871)
633 17th Street, Suite 3000
5
49055310.3
Denver, CO 80202
Telephone: (303) 297-2900
Email: jmill@shermanhoward.com
amilgrom@shermanhoward.com
ATTORNEYS FOR DEFENDANT
CITY OF FORT COLLINS
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify on the 16th
day of October, 2018, that a true and correct copy of the
foregoing pleading, entitled, THE CITY OF FORT COLLINS’ RESPONSE TO
PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR CORRECTION OF THE RECORD IN ADVANCE OF
APPEAL, was served via ICCES e-filing system, upon the following:
Eric Sutherland, pro se
3520 Golden Currant Boulevard
Fort Collins, CO 80521
(By email and US Mail)
Eric R. Burris, pro hac vice
Cole J. Woodward
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP
410 Seventeenth Street, Suite 2200
Denver, CO 80202
/s/ Stephanie Hendrickson
Stephanie Hendrickson, Legal Assistant