The rich are different from you and me: Wellesley legal edition

When you're suing your architects because, you say, they forced your home-expansion project to go more than $15 million over budget, you do things like hiring 19 extra lawyers to supplement the 6 you've already retained to go through the more than 2 million pages of documentation the architects produced in response to your "discovery" demands.

It's the latest legal turn in the 2021 lawsuit filed by a local rich guy who owns an English soccer team, no, not that guy, the other one, John Berylson of Wellesley Hills, and his wife, against 1100 Architect of New York, whom they charge turned their Wellesley Hills home-expansion project into the mother of all money pits.

Today, both sides asked the federal judge in the case, Richard Stearns, for 25 more days to complete discovery - in this case the process of sifting through documents. In addition to the 2 million pages in 162,000 documents that 1100 Architect handed over, 1100's lawyer are having to go through large volumes of documents handed over by contractors the Berylsons hired to expand their manse from 12 to 37 rooms, including a dining pavilion, a project so large they could only accomplish it by first buying a neighboring home and tearing it down. It's the third time the two sides have told Stearns they need more time.

In their request, lawyers for the two sides wrote:

Since that time [of the last extension request, in July], the Parties have continued their accelerated efforts to produce documents, including Defendants’ retaining of an outside team of twenty (20) contract attorneys to assist in completing a review of the more than 160,000 documents responsive to the Plaintiffs’ search terms. At the same time, the Plaintiffs’ counsel’s team of six lawyers and one paralegal retained an outside team of up to nineteen (19) additional contract attorneys to assist in completing a review their own documents for production as well as the review of the same 160,000 documents produced by the Defendants. All parties have had to review the 76,000 documents produced by the third-parties to date.

Stearns took almost no time to to reply.

He granted the extension request, but told the two sides this was the last time he'd do so, setting an end to discovery on Nov. 10. Trial, if it gets that far, might start sometime next year, although Stearns set an April 12 deadline just for the two sides to get through everything else, including motions and replies to those motions by either side for summary judgment.