In a brief order Thursday, Judge Marrero imposed a sanction of $1,048.09 against a party that deliberately broke his individual rule requiring briefs be double-spaced:

At the March 24, 2017 hearing regarding plaintiff CafeX Communications’s (“CafeX”) Motion for a Preliminary Injunction (“Motion,” Dkt. No. 8.) the Court found that defendant Amazon Web Services, Inc. (“Amazon”) violated this Court’s Individual Rules of Practice (“Individual Rules”) which require that all memoranda “be double-spaced and in 12- point font with 1-inch margins.” Amazon’s memorandum of law opposing CafeX’s Motion was 24-point spaced, not double spaced, and allowed Amazon to submit a substantially longer memorandum than the 25 pages provided by this Court’s Individual Rules.

The flouting of this Court’s Individal Rules was a deliberate choice by counsel for Amazon to gain some slight advantage in this litigation. As such, this Court ordered Amazon to replace its memorandum with a compliant memorandum and submit a declaration stating the cost of filing the revised memorandum. Amazon subsequently filed a compliant memorandum of law and counsel for Amazon submitted a declaration stating that the cost of preparing the compliant memorandum was $1,048.09.

As counsel for Amazon’s conduct in subverting this Court’s Individual Rules was deliberate, the Court finds that sanctions in the amount of the cost to prepare a compliant memorandum of law is appropriate to deter similar conduct in the future.