United States District Court, D. Colorado
THE INTEGRATED ASSOCIATES OF DENVER, INC., a Delaware corporation, and THE INTEGRATED ASSOCIATES, INC., a California corporation, Petitioners,
v.
RYAN B. POPE, Respondent.
ORDER
KRISTEN L. MIX UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE.
This
matter is before the Court on Petitioners' unopposed
Notice of Related State Action and
Motion to File Pleadings From Such Action in This
Case [#34][1] (the “Motion”). Petitioners do
an excellent job of summarizing the procedural background to
the Motion [#34], which the Court incorporates here:
On June 7, 2019, this action was initiated by Petitioners to
seek vacatur or modification of an arbitration award. As
asserted in Petitioners' Application and First Amended
Application to vacate or modify, jurisdiction for this action
lies in this Court by way of diversity jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. § 1332.
On May 24, 2019 (14 days prior to the filing of this action),
unbeknownst to Petitioners, Respondent Pope filed a state
court action to seek confirmation of the same arbitration
award under the Colorado Uniform Arbitration Act, C.R.S.
§§ 13-22-222 and 13-22-225. Petitioners were
unaware of Respondent Pope's filing of the state court
action because he never served them with the Civil Case Cover
Sheet and Motion to Confirm, nor otherwise gave Petitioners
notice of his initiation of the state court action. On May
24, 2019, without hearing from Petitioners, the state court
judge granted Respondent Pope's Motion to Confirm and
entered judgment against Petitioners.
On July 2, 2019, after learning of the state court action on
their own and the judgment entered against Petitioners,
Petitioners filed a Motion to Vacate Judgment and sought an
award of costs for Respondent Pope's actions in failing
to serve Petitioners or otherwise give them notice of the
state court action, which caused them to incur the filing fee
and service of process costs associated with this action. On
July 23, 2019, Respondent Pope filed his Response to
Petitioners' Motion to Vacate Judgment in the state court
action, in which he did not oppose Petitioners' request
that the judgment be vacated, but opposed Petitioners'
request for costs. On July 30, 2019, Petitioners filed their
Reply in Support of Motion to Vacate Judgment in the state
court action. On August 8, 2019, the parties appeared before
Magistrate Judge Mix at the Scheduling Conference in this
matter. Unfortunately, neither counsel for the parties
thought to raise the issue of the related state court action
at the Scheduling Conference.
Also on August 8, 2019, the state court granted
Petitioners' Motion to Vacate Judgment, vacating the
judgment improvidently entered against Petitioners, ordering
Petitioners to file a Response to Respondent Pope's
Motion to Confirm Award on or before August 29, 2019, and
reserving a ruling on Petitioners' request for a cost
award against Respondent Pope. Because this matter regarding
the same subject matter as the related state court action was
pending and to avoid duplicative litigation regarding whether
to confirm or vacate the arbitration award, on August 29,
2019, Petitioners filed a Notice of Removal to remove the
related state court action and consolidate it with the
instant action. On August 30, 2019, this Court rejected
Petitioners' Notice of Removal filed in this action,
stating that the Notice of Removal requires a new case filing
with a new filing fee paid. On September 3, 2019, the state
court closed the related state court action based on the
filing of the Notice of Removal.
Motion
[#34] at 1-3 (internal citations, footnotes, paragraph
numbering, and some paragraph breaks omitted).
In the
present Motion [#34], Petitioners take issue with the Clerk
of Court's Administrative Notice directing them to
initiate a new, third action related to this subject matter
and to pay a new filing fee. Id. at 4. They give
three legal bases which they assert provide the Court with
the authority to take notice of the related state action and
accept the pleadings from that case.
First,
Petitioners believe that the Court has authority to take
notice of the related state action pursuant to
“D.C.COLOLCIVR. 32 [sic]” and to accept the
pleadings attached to the Motion for filing in this case
“to avoid the time, expense and complexity of filing a
third action involving the same parties and subject
matter.” Id. Petitioners do not further
discuss this Local Rule (which does not exist as cited),
although they are presumably referring to D.C.COLO.LCivR 3.2:
Notice of Related Cases, which provides:
(a) Notice. A party to a case shall file a notice identifying
all cases pending in this or any other federal, state, or
foreign jurisdiction that are related to the case. Under this
rule, no party may seek special assignment, reassignment, or
transfer of a related case from one judicial officer to
another.
(b) Related Cases. Related cases are cases that have common
facts and claims and:
(1) have at least one party in common; or
(2) are filed serially or collectively as a group by the same
...