There was yet another twist in the rancorous back and forth lawsuits between West Sub Hospital landlord Rathnaker Reddy Patlola and hospital CEO Manoj Prasad’s Resilience Healthcare Friday morning.
“I thought we were having a settlement conference,” Judge Patrick Stanton said as he looked out at the four attorneys standing before his bench, including newcomer Travis Richardson.
Unbeknownst to anyone else but himself, attorney Richardson had filed an appearance with the court clerk as Prasad’s new personal attorney and notice of a motion to intervene in the case.
Ramco attorney Scott Kaplan, who’d been informed in the hallway outside the courtroom by a reporter of Richardson’s appearance and his motion to intervene in the case, informed Stanton that there’d been a motion filed “with no proper notice.”
“Did you give the court a courtesy copy,” Stanton queried Richardson, who had not done so.
That initiated a several minutes long colloquy between the judge and Richardson regarding just what issue it was specifically that Richardson was attempting to intervene in.
“You need to tender a proposal of what you want to intervene in,” the judge said.
At one point, asked again specifically what it was he was seeking to do in an intervention, Richardson told the judge, “I’m looking to prevent the proverbial (instance) of the bovine to the chopping block.”
He did not elaborate on his statement.
When Richardson told Stanton he had not attached the formal motion to intervene with his motion notice, a somewhat perturbed Stanton said, “I can’t grant it without looking at it.”
After several more minutes of back and forth over when Richardson could have his formal motion filed with the court, Stanton appeared a bit perplexed.
“I was under the impression that we’d be meeting today (in chambers for a settlement conference),” Stanton said. “Now I’m looking at a new counsel.”
The parties then went into the judge’s chambers for approximately 90 minutes of settlement talks. They returned to court without going back into session.
Stanton informed the four reporters present that the hearing had been continued to July 28.
In the one page-plus motion that Richardson filed but did not share with the court, he stated that Prasad had “recently released his previous counsel” and asked the judge to accept his appearance as Prasad’s new legal counsel. He said he would “subsequently file an amended/supplemental Petition to Intervene as an interested party in the above-captioned case.”
Richardson said, “The pace of the current litigation dictated the timing of this request,” and that he needed “the time and opportunity to conduct a more thorough investigation and review of the case file.”
Richardson assured the judge that the motion was “not brought for the purpose of contumacious (defiant or disobedient) delay and that to not grant his request “would defeat the aims and goals of justice.”