Judge OKs Deadline Extensions in Keiser University FTSA Case

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom for Southern Florida granted a motion by plaintiff Maria Fernanda Soto Leigue to extend the briefing deadlines in her Florida Telephone Solicitation Act class action against Keiser University, said a paperless order she entered Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-22307). Monday was the deadline for the parties to exchange expert witness reports on issues of class certification, and rebuttal expert witness reports were due Nov. 28 (see 2211040056). Bloom's order extends those deadlines to Dec. 29 and Jan. 19, respectively. The complaint alleges that Keiser's high student turnover rate, one of the highest for any private university in the U.S., provoked the school to engage in aggressive telemarketing practices that ran afoul of the FTSA. Keiser had opposed the deadline extensions on grounds that the plaintiff “has not demonstrated diligence to support a finding of good cause to modify the scheduling order,” said the school in an opposition filing Wednesday. She bases her motion for deadline extensions on her assertions that she has been diligently attempting to locate the entity that transmitted the text messages on Keiser’s behalf, but she has not subpoenaed the entity for the text records, even though she has known the entity’s identity for months, said the school. “Apparently seeking to win this case through gamesmanship and not on the merits,” Keiser opposes a “simple request to modify” the schedule to allow additional time to obtain documents needed by her expert to prepare his report, said the plaintiff’s reply, also filed Wednesday. Efforts to locate the text messaging vendor, TextLane, that the plaintiff seeks to subpoena “have been unsuccessful,” the reply said.