By: Rob Harris

On March 18, Judge Eileen Brantsten, overseeing Vijay Singh’s case against the PGA Tour, met with the attorneys for purposes of establishing a case management schedule.

Observing that “the parties can accomplish the discovery in a SHORTER period of time” than the time frames suggested by the attorneys, Judge Brantsten  established a discovery and deposition schedule that calls for the parties to designate the case ready to be assigned to a trial list by August 31, 2015.  Notably, she indicated that “dispositive motions” by September 30, 2015.

“Dispositive motions,” most notably summary judgment, will enable the parties to set forth in publicly filed documents the results of their discovery effort. In other words, Vijay’s attorneys will be able to discuss the inside information they gather about the Tour’s application of its drug enforcement policy as it relates to other players, information that the Tour likely prefers not to be publicized.

The court’s scheduling order thus gives those who care about such things data points to forecast when this dispute will settle. The parties either will reach a resolution shortly, before the discovery effort takes off in earnest, or, if they start down this path, settlement likely will occur between July and September 2013, after discovery is complete but before Vijay would otherwise go public with the information he has gathered.