Filing deadlines set in Schultz's suit over Sonics

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman isn't planning to leave a lot of time between the city's court date with the Sonics and a lawsuit filed by former team owner Howard Schultz.

Pechman filed an order Monday setting the timing for scheduling the Schultz suit, asking the two sides to file their joint status report and discovery plan by June 30, four days after the city's trial is scheduled to end.

Once attorneys for Schultz and Sonics owner Clay Bennett submit their joint status report, Pechman will set a court date as well as deadlines for discovery and other pretrial work in that case.

In the city's suit, Pechman set the trial date for about five months after the joint status reports were filed.

If she follows a similar schedule in the Schultz case, it would go to trial sometime around November, or about when the NBA's next regular-season schedule begins.

The Sonics hope to be free to move to Oklahoma City in time for the upcoming season. But even without Schultz's suit, the city could keep the team in Seattle next year either by winning its own case against Bennett or by appealing a loss in the June trial.

The Schultz case involves the former Sonics owner seeking to overturn the 2006 sale of the team to Bennett's Oklahoma partnership on the charge of fraud, with Schultz claiming he was lied to about the group's intentions to make a good-faith effort to keep the team in Seattle.

The city's trial against Bennett's group is scheduled to begin June 16 in Pechman's Seattle courtroom. The city seeks to require the Sonics to play the remaining two years of their lease agreement at KeyArena, while Bennett's group seeks the right to pay the remaining rent on the deal and be free to leave immediately.