Local Rule LR Gen 101: SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF RULES
D.R.I. — General rule
LR Gen 101 SCOPE AND PURPOSE OF RULES
(a) Title. These Local Rules are adopted pursuant to Title 28 United States Code, Section 2071, Rule 83 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and Rule 57 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and shall be known and cited as the Local Rules of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island ("Local Rules" or "DRI LR ___").
(b) Effective Date. These Local Rules shall become effective on January 1, 2006 and shall apply to all cases then pending and thereafter filed, subject to any amendments adopted thereafter.
(c) Applicability. These Local Rules and any amendments shall apply to all proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island; provided, however, that if the Court determines that exceptional circumstances exist in which application of a Rule would create an injustice or undue hardship, the Court may suspend the operation of that Rule under those circumstances. In addition to these rules, all parties must comply with any and all pretrial order(s) issued in any case, except where they conflict in which case the pretrial order(s) shall govern.
(d) Previous Rules and Orders Superseded. All prior rules, standing orders and general orders are superseded and abrogated.
(e) Construction. These Rules should be construed consistently with other applicable statutes and rules to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of all proceedings before the Court.
(f) Definitions.
(1) "Court" refers to the judge or judicial officer before whom a proceeding is pending, unless otherwise stated or unless the context in which the term is used plainly requires otherwise.
(2) "Clerk" means the Clerk of the Court and includes deputy clerks of court.
(3) "Marshal" means the United States Marshal and includes deputy marshals.
(4) "Conventionally Filed/Served" means documents presented to the Court or party in paper or other non-electronic format.
(5) "Document" means any written matter filed by or with the Court, whether filed conventionally or electronically, including but not limited to motions, objections, pleadings, applications, petitions, notices, declarations, stipulations, affidavits, exhibits, briefs, memoranda of law and orders.
(6) "ECF" means the Court's Electronic Case Filing System, which is an automated system that receives and stores documents in electronic form.
(7) "Electronic Filing" or "Electronically Filed" means the transmission of a document in Portable Document Format ("PDF") for filing using the ECF system facilities.
(8) "Filing User" means those attorneys who have a court-issued login and password to file documents electronically in this judicial district.
(9) "Main Document" means motions, objections, replies, stipulations, waivers, notices and other pleadings, but does not include attachments or exhibits to such pleadings.
(10) "NEF" means Notice of Electronic Filing, which is the email notice automatically generated by ECF each time a document is electronically filed.
(11) "PDF" means Portable Document Format. This includes both "Electronically Converted PDF Documents," which are created from a word processing system (MS Word, WordPerfect, etc.) using PDF creation software and are text-searchable, and "Scanned PDF Documents," which are created from paper documents run through a scanner and can be made text-searchable.
(12) "Megabyte" (MB) is the amount of computer storage needed to store 1,048,576 characters, which is equivalent to approximately 260 pages of an "Electronically Converted PDF Document" or 20 pages of a "Scanned PDF Document."
(13) "Page" from a PDF document for purposes of these rules must be the equivalent of a "page" from a conventionally filed (paper) document which was prepared to conform with the requirements of these Local Rules.
Effective 1/15/13: New §(f)(2) and (3) added, and existing §(f)(2) – (11) renumbered as (f)(4) – (13). Effective 1/3/11: §§(f) and (g) incorporated into new §(f). Effective 1/5/09: §(b) amended, and §(g) added.
CROSS-REFERENCES See LR Gen 113(e) (rules do not restrict Court from issuing general orders or administrative orders). See also LR Gen 301(b).