This is an amazing ruling for Null but I will wait until the 23rd with managed expectations because the court has already issued an empty threat about dismissing the case and Greer's reposting of his retarded schedule was apparently deemed good enough.
They are required to issue threats before acting on them (depending on the severity of the sanction). The purpose is to clearly inform the threatened side that they are walking on a thin line, and to give power to the later-issued sanction. This is ordinarily required for normal litigants (see, for example,
Fuentes v. Chavez, 314 F. App'x 143 (10th Cir. 2009) "Rule 41(b) specifically authorizes a district court to dismiss an action for failing to comply with any aspect of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [...] Employing Rule 41(b) to dismiss a case without prejudice for failure to comply with Rule 8 of course allows the plaintiff another go at trimming the verbiage; accordingly, a district court may, without abusing its discretion, enter such an order without attention to any particular procedures. Dismissing a case with prejudice, however, is a significantly harsher remedy-the death penalty of pleading punishments-and we have held that, for a district court to exercise soundly its discretion in imposing such a result, it must first consider certain criteria. Specifically, "[t]hese criteria include '(1) the degree of actual prejudice to the defendant; (2) the amount of interference with the judicial process; (3) the culpability of the litigant; (4) whether the court warned the party in advance that dismissal of the action would be a likely sanction for noncompliance; and (5) the efficacy of lesser sanctions.'") and to a much higher degree for pro se litigants (
Id. "[while talking about dismissal as a sanction] While we are more reluctant to dismiss a pro se plaintiffs complaint with prejudice, as it is more difficult to determine whether he has truly grasped how to cure the defects in his complaint, the court did not simply tell Mr. Fuentes to "comply with the pleading requirements" but told him plainly to add more facts. He did not do so, and his similarly confusing brief before this court suggests another opportunity to amend would be futile as well. There is a limit to how many bites even a pro se plaintiff can have at the apple, and it was not an abuse of discretion for the district court to find that Mr. Fuentes had met that limit.")
This is also true for sanctions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b)(2) which the judge cited. (see, for example
Royal MFG Co. v. IXL Premium Lubricants, Case No. 1:16-cv-00050-PMW (D. Utah Apr. 20, 2018) or
Prisbrey v. State Auto Ins. Cos., 4:21-cv-00124-DN-DBP (D. Utah Nov. 27, 2023))
I absolutely can’t wait to see how Russhole tries to spin this as Josh’s fault somehow
I mean, he already has, and the Judge specifically dismissed those arguments. Here's to hoping.
