Opinion
No. 00 C 1689.
May 4, 2000.
MEMORANDUN OPINION AND ORDER
At the same time earlier this week that this Court was presented with the litigants' competing proposals for scheduling the several phases of this patent infringement action, plaintiffs' counsel sought and obtained leave to respond to the Counterclaim that had been advanced by defendant Morton Grove Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Morton Grove"). When this Court received that new pleading, however, it noted that plaintiffs had not only addressed the Counterclaim but had also filed an unbidden Reply to the Affirmative Defenses ("ADS") advanced in Morton Grove's Answer.
No such pleading is permitted without leave of court (see the last sentence of Fed.R.Civ.P. 7(a)), and this Court sees no need to grant such leave where the law treats ADs as automatically placed into issue without the need to file any response. Accordingly the portion of the current filing that comprises denials of the Morton Grove ADs is stricken, both because it is unauthorized and because it is mere surplusage.