Penn Mart Realty Co. v. U. S. Financial Inc.
Opinion
lead Opinion
Turrentine, J.
ORDER STRIKING INTERROGATORIES
This court is charged with the duty of conducting the pretrial discovery proceedings in fourteen cases which the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferred to this district as part of the U. S. Financial Securities Litigation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407 .
On February 7,1975, the court received a copy of a behemoth set of interrogatories served by mail on the defendant U. S. Financial by the defendants Gant and Asaro. Additional copies were served on fourteen plaintiffs’ attorneys, thirty-three defendants’ attorneys, fifteen defendants who may not be represented by counsel, and five related and interested parties.
The set of interrogatories is two inches high, 381 pages long, and contains a total of 2,736 questions and subparts.
*498 It was expensive to prepare, copy, and mail these interrogatories. Answering the questions will be much more burdensome. If an attorney takes ten minutes to answer each of the 2,736 questions and subparts, and charges $50.00 an hour, his fee will be $22,800. At three answers to a page the answers will fill 916 pages and measure six inches high. To mail copies to the sixty-seven parties on the service…