On December 16, 2022, Acting Chief Administrative Judge Amaker announced amendments to Commercial Division Rule 16, Motions in General, effective January 3, 2023.[1] The amendments provide for the following:
- Counsel submitting exhibits to motion papers should clearly separate them with divider pages with the exhibit numbers, instead of tabs.
- Counsel shall follow the hyperlinking guidance under Commercial Division Rule 6 for motion papers.
- The Court may direct counsel to submit hard copies of decisions or other authorities not readily available, instead of such hard copy submissions being mandatory.
These amendments to Rule 16 are identical to the language proposed by the Commercial Division Advisory Council in February of 2022.[2] In the request for public comment on the proposed amendments, the Advisory Council explained that these revisions were aimed at modernizing the language of Rule 16 “to reflect the widespread use of electronic filing”—with the use of divider pages instead of tabs and the inclusion of hyperlinking.
