Missing a court filing deadline by one minute may prove to be a very costly mistake for a Southern California law firm. Morrison & Foerster LLP may have cost their client about $1 million because their motion for attorneys' fees was filed one minute late.

According to court papers, one of the lawyers with the firm delivered the motion to a courier service at 3:14 p.m., forty-five minutes ahead of the looming deadline. "[We] never had a problem with getting papers filed by 4 p.m. when delivering them to the attorney service [about forty-five minutes before]," one of the firm's attorneys told the court.

The courier reported after encountering "unusually heavy traffic," he arrived at the courthouse one minute late (according to his calibrated watch) and found the doors locked. Federal court Judge Cormac Carney was unsympathetic. "These circumstances, however regrettable, do not meet the standard for 'excusable neglect," Judge Carney wrote. "[T]he entirely foreseeable obstacle of traffic in Southern California in the late afternoon ... cannot justify an enlargement of time."

The law firm's lawyers may take solace in the fact that Judge Carney ruled that even if the motion for attorneys' fees had been filed on time it would have been denied as there wasn't sufficient evidence to justify the award.

—Source: The Wall Street Journal