As you may recall from my last update on August 10, 2010, Pacquiao's legal team filed a motion to strike portions of Mayweather Promotions' Reply addressing the alleged Mayweather Jr. statements or, in the alternative, requested leave to file a sur-reply to address the new arguments.
In August I predicted that the "Court w[ould] grant Pacquiao's motion to the extent he seeks leave to file a sur-reply, Pacquiao w[ould] file the sur-reply, and the Court w[ould] deny Mayweather Promotion's motion to dismiss."
On December 15, 2010, the Court entered an Order "that plaintiff shall file a brief sur-reply to defendant’s motion to dismiss (Doc. #49) of no more than five (5) pages, within ten (10) days of entry of this order."
Interestingly, the Court also granted Pacquiao's motion to strike at the end of the Order despite holding as follows:
Here, Mayweather Promotions argues that its reply only responds to new allegations against it raised in Pacquiao’s opposition, and as such, these arguments should not be stricken from the reply. The court agrees. However, the court finds that based on the breadth of arguments raised in the reply, Pacquiao should be granted an opportunity to provide a brief response. See Cedars-Sinai Medical Center v. Shalala, 177 F.3d 1126, 1129 (9th Cir. 1999) (a court has the inherent authority to grant leave to a party to file a sur-reply when the information would be germane to the court’s evaluation of a pending matter). Therefore, the court shall grant Pacquiao’s motion with respect to filing a sur-reply.Given that the Court granted the request to file a sur-reply, I am not really clear how the Court could have also granted the motion to strike, i.e. with the portions of the reply stricken there is nothing left to address in the sur-reply. My guess is that there is a typo in the Order, but that's just a guess with the caveat that I didn't read the motion papers very closely.
Fight Lawyer
