All local rules for N.D. Ill., integrated with this judge's published requirements.
Unless the Court directs otherwise, counsel and pro se litigants must not communicate with the Court about the merits of the case by letter, phone, or email (excluding the submission of a proposed order). All communications must be made in the form of a motion, brief, or a status report, properly noticed and served on opposing counsel. If a party has questions about scheduling, the status of motions, or the logistics of trial, contact Judge Kness's Courtroom Deputy, Ellen Reyes, at Ellen_Reyes@ilnd.uscourts.gov or 312-582-3254.
Neither a motion nor brief in support of or in opposition to any motion nor objections to a report and recommendation or order of a magistrate judge or special master, shall exceed 15 pages without prior approval of the court. Local Rule 7.1 ↗
Neither a motion nor brief in support of or in opposition to any motion nor objections to a report and recommendation or order of a magistrate judge or special master, shall exceed 15 pages without prior approval of the court. Local Rule 7.1 ↗
Neither a motion nor brief in support of or in opposition to any motion nor objections to a report and recommendation or order of a magistrate judge or special master, shall exceed 15 pages without prior approval of the court. Local Rule 7.1 ↗
(b) A judge may require a motion or an objection to a magistrate judge’s order to be accompanied by a notice of presentment specifying the date and time on which, and judge before whom, the motion or objection is to be presented. The date of presentment shall be not more than 14 days following the date on which the motion or objection is delivered to the court pursuant to LR 78.1. Local Rule 5.3(b) ↗
Except where a judge fixes a different time in accordance with this rule, the original of any motion shall be filed by 4:30 p.m. of the second business day preceding the date of presentment. A judge may fix a time for delivery longer than that provided by this rule, or elect to hear motions less frequently than daily, or both. Local Rule 78.1 ↗
Parties requesting entry of an order to preserve the confidentiality of materials disclosed in discovery must base the proposed order on the Model Confidentiality Order contained in the Local Rules (Form LR26.2), available HERE . The Model Confidentiality Order provides that parties should include or delete language in brackets as necessary to the specific case. Any other proposed changes to this model order must be shown in redlined format that reflects both deletions and additions to the model text. For proposed substantive changes, counsel and parties are encouraged to include comments explaining why the changes are sought. Counsel shall file a motion for entry of the proposed confidentiality order and attach as an exhibit the redlined proposed order. Counsel shall separately submit a clean copy of the proposed order in Word format to the Court’s proposed order inbox: Proposed_Order_Kness@ilnd.uscourts.gov. The Court will not enter a proposed confidentiality order suggesting that material a party has designated as “ confidential ” may, for that reason alone, be filed under seal. Any confidentiality order that contemplates under-seal filing must provide that no documents may be filed under seal absent a motion showing good cause for sealing a portion of the record. A party ’ s mere designation of information as “ confidential ” is insufficient to permit filing under seal. A party seeking to file material under seal must instead set forth in its motion the reasons why the record should be sealed. When a party wishes to file a document on the public docket that another party has marked confidential, the parties must meet and confer to determine who is the appropriate party to file any motion to seal.
The court may set a briefing schedule. Oral argument may be allowed in the court’s discretion. Local Rule 78.3 ↗
Any judge wishing to refer a matter in a civil case pending on that judge’s calendar to a magistrate judge may do so following procedures approved by the Executive Committee. Local Rule 72.1 ↗
Other Discovery Motions The Court believes that parties can and should work out most discovery disputes without Court intervention. The Court expects the parties to make a genuine, good-faith effort to resolve disagreements before filing a discovery motion. The Court will not hear or consider any discovery motion or non-dispositive dispute unless the movant has complied with the “meet and confer” requirement of Local Rule 37.2. The motion must state with specificity when and how the movant compiled with Local Rule 37.2. Compliance with the Local Rules requires a good-faith effort to resolve discovery disputes, including communications that take place in person or by phone. The exchange of emails or letters will not normally be sufficient to comply with the Local Rules. Motions that do not comply with the Local Rules may be stricken. If a party requests a meet-and-confer, the other party must respond promptly and participate in a meet-and-confer in a reasonable time. If an impasse arises about the recovery of electronically stored information (ESI), no discovery motion may be filed unless the parties first meet and confer to determine whether the requested material can be retrieved and, if so, the most effective way of doing so. Such a conference must take place in person or by phone and must be attended by an IT representative of the party (or, for a putative class, an IT representative of plaintiffs’ counsel) that served the request and an IT representative of the party that received the request. Motions to Dismiss The pendency of a dispositive motion, such as a motion to dismiss, does not automatically cause discovery to be stayed. Sequence of Discovery Parties are reminded that there is no “order” in which discovery must occur. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(d)(3). One party’s failure or inability to respond to discovery will not excuse any other party’s non-compliance. Boilerplate Objections Objections to written discovery must state with specificity the grounds for objecting. See, e.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(4) (“The grounds for objecting to an interrogatory must be stated with specificity.”); Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(2)(B) (“For each item or category, the response must . . . state with specificity the grounds for objecting to the request, including the reasons.”). That is, the objecting party must offer a particularized reason tailored to each request. Boilerplate objections are inadequate and are to be disregarded. For example, a generic assertion that a discovery request is “overbroad” or “unduly burdensome”—without an accompanying explanation—is the same as not objecting at all. Limit on the Number of Requests for Admission The Court sets a limit of 25 requests for admission under Rules 26(b)(2) and 36 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Per “side” means parties represented by the same counsel. Any party may seek relief from this order by way of motion .
Courtesy Copies Unless the Court directs otherwise , courtesy copies will not be accepted. Please do not prepare them and do not try to deliver them. If the Court orders a party to provide courtesy copies, please deliver those copies to the drop-box outside the Courtroom Deputy’s office (Room 2132). Please do not bring courtesy copies to Chambers. A delivery signature will not be available. Courtesy copies should always be printed from ECF after electronic filing so that the copies include the ECF header. Courtesy copies need not be delivered in an envelope unless the pleading contains under seal material. Source ↗
The Court will set all newly filed cases for an initial status hearing approximately 75 days after the filing of the complaint. The initial status hearing will be the scheduling conference as required by Rule 16(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b); see also Local Rule 16.1 (“the initial status hearing shall be the scheduling conference referred to in Fed. R. Civ. P. 16”). The parties must meet and conduct a planning conference as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(f). After conferring, the parties must submit two items to the Court. First, the parties must file a Joint Initial Status Report, not to exceed seven pages, at least seven days before the initial status hearing. The Joint Initial Status Report is the “discovery plan” required by Rule 26(f). If defense counsel has not yet filed an appearance, plaintiff’s counsel should prepare the status report. The Joint Initial Status Report shall provide the information listed in the template found HERE . Second, the parties must submit a Word version of a proposed scheduling order under Rule 16(b) to the Court’s proposed order mailbox, Proposed_Order_Kness@ilnd.uscourts.gov. The template for the proposed scheduling order is available HERE . At that point, the Court will adopt or modify the proposed plan, as necessary. At the initial status hearing with the Court, the parties should be prepared to discuss the nature of the case, report on the possibility of settlement, and discuss the nature and length of discovery necessary to prepare the case for trial. The Court may set a discovery cut-off date at the initial conference. In some cases, the scheduled status conference may take place before a defendant has responded to the plaintiff’s complaint. The Court expects all defendants who have been served with process to participate in this conference even if they have not yet responded to the complaint. Source ↗
Motions and Memoranda of Law Citations If counsel cites to an unpublished opinion, the Court strongly prefers citations to Westlaw. It is not necessary to attach copies of unpublished opinions if they are available on Westlaw. Please attach copies of any cited authorities that are not available on Westlaw. Searchable Text All electronically filed documents shall be made word searchable before being filed on ECF. For any filing of any kind ( including exhibits in support of a motion or any Local Rule 56.1 Statement), counsel must run an OCR conversion on it before uploading it onto CM/ECF. To do this in Adobe, go to Tools, Text Recognition, In This File, and select All Pages. If you see the message, “Acrobat could not perform recognition (OCR) on this page because this page contains renderable text,” click “Ignore future errors in this document,” and click OK. The Court strongly encourages counsel to convert any word-processed document into a .pdf document by printing or publishing to .pdf, rather than manually scanning a paper copy into .pdf. Document Format The parties are reminded that the Local Rules concerning page limits, font size, line spacing, and margins for filed documents are not mere suggestions. See LR 5.2. Footnotes are to be used sparingly and only when necessary; footnotes may never be employed as an artifice designed to squeeze more words under the page limit. The Court may strike any filing that does not comply with these requirements. Source ↗
Notice of Filing vs. Notice of Motion Please do not file a “notice of filing ” in federal court, as they are unnecessary and serve only to clutter the docket. A notice of motion is a notice that sets a date and time for a hearing with the Court for a motion. A party must file a notice of motion for any motion, as provided in Local Rule 5.3. ***The foregoing requirement is suspended indefinitely by Judge Kness’s current motions policy, which is in effect due to the ongoing interruption of normal Court operations due to public health circumstances*** Source ↗