Removal

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This post is from the non-Reed Smith side of the blog.

There are two key rulings in Addelson v. Sanofi S.A., 2016 WL 6216124 (E.D. Mo. Oct. 25, 2016). Neither is novel or complex. The court can’t exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant on claims made by an out-of-state plaintiff and said out-of-state plaintiff can’t be used to defeat federal diversity jurisdiction. Their significance lies more in the fact that they were issued by the Eastern District of Missouri.

Defendant Sanofi (the U.S. subsidiary) is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in New Jersey. Id. at *1. Plaintiff Addelson is a resident of St. Louis County, Missouri. Plaintiff Braxton is a New Jersey resident. Plaintiffs both were prescribed and used the prescription medication taxotere in their home states. Id. Plaintiffs have no relationship with each other.

Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a single complaint on behalf of both women in state court in Saint Louis, Missouri – a known judicial hellhole favored by the plaintiffs’ bar. So, why join these two women? Plaintiff Addelson is a Missouri resident who suffered her alleged injury in Missouri which establishes personal jurisdiction for this incident over Sanofi. Plaintiff Braxton is a New Jersey resident which means there is no diversity between her and Sanofi which also means the case can’t be removed to federal court. Clearly a not-too-subtle attempt by plaintiffs to bring and keep this case in state court in St. Louis. Unfortunately, this is a tactic that has worked in Missouri. Missouri’s joinder rules have been broadly interpreted to often allow plaintiffs’ counsel to join together groups of plaintiffs from different states with nothing in common except use of the same product. So, 1 Missouri plaintiff gets you the connection to Missouri and 1 plaintiff from defendant’s home state defeats diversity and keeps you in state court.Continue Reading Misjoined Plaintiffs Can’t Be Used to Forum Shop

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This is a guest post, by Jaimee Farrer, an associate at Reed Smith.  We’re always looking for new twists that can help in efforts to remove cases to federal court, and the case Jaimee describes does that, relying on an MDL standing severance order to short circuit what might have been lengthy and complex joinder arguments.  As always, our guest posters should get full credit (and any blame) for their analyses.  With that said, take it away Jaimee.

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We’re used to seeing judges split the baby when it comes to ruling on Daubert motions, for example.  Courts frequently allow an expert to testify about some of his/her opinions while excluding his/her other opinions, thereby giving both sides a little of what they want.  But remand decisions are usually black and white with a clear winner and a clear loser.  Either a case gets to remain in federal court and the defendants are the happy victors or the case gets remanded to state court, leaving the defendants to sulk and bemoan their fate.  But in today’s opinion, In Re Benicar (Olmesartan) Products Liability Litigation, 2016 WL 4059650 (D.N.J. July 27, 2016), which comes courtesy of the Benicar MDL Court, both scenarios happened simultaneously . . . well at least sort of.

Seventy-nine plaintiffs joined in filing a Complaint in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, against five defendants, two Daiichi Sankyo affiliates and three Forest Laboratories affiliates.  2016 WL 4059650 at *1-2.  In their Complaint, the plaintiffs alleged generally that they were injured by drugs developed and marketed by the defendants. Id. at *1.  The defendants removed the action to the Eastern District of Missouri, claiming diversity jurisdiction. Id.  The defendants concurrently moved to stay the case pending MDL transfer, which was granted. Id.  Plaintiffs predictably moved to remand, arguing lack of complete diversity. Id.  There things stood for several months while MDL transfer occurred. Id. at 2.  After the transfer, the stay was lifted, allowing the District of New Jersey to rule on the plaintiffs’ remand motion. Id.

At this point, in a multi-plaintiff case, we usually see arguments about fraudulent joinder, fraudulent misjoinder, or alternatively about personal jurisdiction. See here and here, for examples.  Not this time.  In ruling on remand, the Court conducted a cursory analysis of the citizenship of the parties and determined that thirty-five of the seventy-nine plaintiffs were citizens of the same state where at least one of the defendants has its principal place of business or is incorporated. Id. at *2.  That’s usually bad news for defendants.Continue Reading Guest Post – Benicar MDL Court: An Unconventional, but Relatively Simple, Remand Decision

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Here’s some more inside baseball on grounds for removing cases from state to federal court.  In brief, the issue is this: does the “bad faith” standard added to the removal statute (28 U.S.C. §1446(c)(1)) in 2011 approximate the fraudulent joinder standard so that fraudulent joinder becomes a form of “bad faith” not subject to the one-year limit otherwise imposed on removals by reason of diversity of citizenship?  Fraudulent joinder is also an exception the “voluntary/involuntary” rule.  E.g., Crockett v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 436 F.3d 529, 532 (5th Cir. 2006); Mayes v. Rapoport, 198 F.3d 457, 461 n.8 (4th Cir. 1999); Insinga v. LaBella, 845 F.2d 249, 254 (11th Cir. 1988).

We wish to acknowledge the assistance of Emily Kimmelman, a Reed Smith 2016 summer associate, in compiling the research for this post.

In 2011 (effective January 6, 2012), Congress passed the Federal Courts Jurisdiction & Venue Clarification Act (the “JVCA”).  The JVCA did a number of things, which we discussed here (back then (in 2011), we were most interested in Congress having left intact the statutory language that allows removal before service).  What we’re discussing today is the JVCA’s creation of a “bad faith” exception in 28 U.S.C. §1446(c)(1).  Specifically, §1446(c)(1) provides for diversity jurisdiction removal, even after one year if “the district court finds that the plaintiff has acted in bad faith in order to prevent a defendant from removing the action.”

Nothing is certain, except the controversy over how the bad faith exception interacts with the fraudulent joinder exception to the voluntary-involuntary rule.  Everybody knows the standard for fraudulent joinder.  It exists where “there is no reasonable basis in fact or colorable ground supporting the claim against the joined defendant, or no real intention in good faith to prosecute the action against the defendants or seek a joint judgment.”  In re Briscoe, 448 F.3d 201, 217 (3d Cir. 2006).Continue Reading Fraudulent Joinder & Bad Faith – Explaining Another Removal Muddle

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The last time we wrote about Flagg v. Stryker Corp., we thought it would be the last time we’d write about Flagg v. Stryker Corp. Pain and frustrated resignation oozed from Bexis’s keyboard as he wrote that a Fifth Circuit panel had ordered remand of the removed complaint, even though defendants had a solid basis for removal. Along with the manufacturers of the toe implant device that was the subject of the complaint, the Louisiana plaintiff had also sued his doctors for malpractice, and his doctors were also from Louisiana. The purpose, at least in part, seemed clear: to defeat diversity and keep the complaint in state court. But Louisiana law requires plaintiffs to exhaust the administrative procedures set out in the Louisiana Medical Malpractice Act (“LMMA”) before suing their doctors in court. And the plaintiff (admittedly) had not done so. So the non-diverse doctors were not proper defendants, and removal on the basis of diversity seemed appropriate. In fact, plaintiff never moved to remand, instead requesting a stay while he tried to complete the LMMA’s administrative procedures, a request that the district court denied.

On appeal, however, the Fifth Circuit panel addressed diversity jurisdiction sua sponte and held that it didn’t exist. As we discussed in our last post on this case, the panel noted that the LMMA had procedural “outs,” its administrative process wasn’t always a prerequisite to filing suit, and that it was reasonable to conclude that plaintiff could still win its medical malpractice claims even though they may have been filed early. With that, and little more, the Fifth Circuit ordered remand. As we mentioned, we thought that was the end of it.

We were wrong.Continue Reading All Was Not Lost: Fifth Circuit Issues En Banc Decision Reversing Panel’s Earlier Remand Ruling in Flagg v. Stryker Corp.

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Last week, the Judge in the Biomet hip implant MDL denied a plaintiff’s motion for remand, upholding Biomet’s fraudulent joinder argument based on Maryland’s “sealed container doctrine.”  Laughlin v. Biomet, Inc., 2016 WL 626514 (N.D. Ind. Feb. 17, 2016).  The plaintiff made defect claims against not only Biomet, Inc., the manufacturer, but also the local distributor of the device.  The purpose was clear.  The local distributor, like the plaintiff, was a Maryland citizen, and so its presence as a defendant would defeat diversity and prevent removal to federal court.

But distributors in Maryland have a defense to product liability claims under Maryland’s sealed container doctrine if they received the product in a sealed container, did not know and could not reasonably have known of the defect, and did not manufacture, design or alter the product.  Id. at *2 (citing Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Roc. §5-405(b)).  So, when Biomet removed the case to federal court, it submitted a declaration from the distributor with testimony establishing all these elements of the sealed container doctrine.  Id. at *3.  And that was enough.Continue Reading Biomet Hip Implant MDL Judge Upholds Fraudulent Joinder Removal Based on Sealed Container Doctrine

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Back in September, we reported on Flagg v. Stryker Corp., 801 F.3d 456 (5th Cir. 2015), which reversed a nearly ten-year trend in Louisiana product liability litigation recognizing diversity jurisdiction where plaintiffs improperly sued in-state medical malpractice defendants in violation of Louisiana’s medical review board pre-submission requirement.

Literally hundreds of cases have been removed…

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Here are a couple of non-litigation related matters that we thought our readers need to know about.

First, the FDA.  We’ve pointed out before that the FDA’s “intended use” regulations for drugs (21 C.F.R. §201.128) and devices 21 C.F.R. §801.4) both contain the following potentially disturbing language:

[I]f a manufacturer knows, or has knowledge of facts that would give him notice that a device introduced into interstate commerce by him is to be used for conditions, purposes, or uses other than the ones for which he offers it, he is required to provide adequate labeling for such a device which accords with such other uses to which the article is to be put.

This language has the potential, if the FDA wanted to, to allow the prosecution of a drug or device manufacturer for an “adulterated”/”misbranded” product (for not having “adequate labeling”), merely because that manufacturer KNEW ABOUT off-label use of its products – forget promotion (truthful or otherwise). Fortunately, the FDA generally has not read this language literally.  Instead it requires prior agency approval of warnings about risks peculiar to off-label uses (we discussed that here).Continue Reading The FDA Tiptoes – and Congress Splashes Into – the 21st Century

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We received a couple of odd anonymous comments to our “breaking news” post about the Amarin First Amendment victory for truthful off-label promotion.  Both of them raised the same suggestion:  “Does the logic of this opinion permit a generic manufacturer to include truthful warnings about the risks of a drug on its labeling when such truthful warnings do not appear on the labeling of the branded drug?”

Not much later, we saw the same point raised by a plaintiff-side lawyer in this story in 360:

“I think this decision has huge implications for the preemption doctrine,” Lou Bograd of the Center for Constitutional Litigation PC said.

“If it’s the case that drug companies have the First Amendment right to make truthful statements about off-label uses, and the FDA cannot prohibit them, then it follows that they would have the First Amendment right to truthfully communicate the risks of their products even if that information isn’t on the label of the brand-name products,” he said.

Needless to say, we don’t think that’s true.  Moreover, if plaintiffs try for what amounts to an Amarin-based Hail Mary pass, it may even create a jurisdictional advantage for our side.Continue Reading Batting Down Generic Plaintiffs’ Amarin Hail Mary Pass

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A recent pelvic mesh case in the District of Maryland, Sullivan v. Calvert Memorial Hospital, No. PJM 14-118, Memorandum Opinion (D. Md. July 30, 2015), offers an interesting and useful take on federal jurisdiction when plaintiffs name local doctors as co-defendants.  You know the drill.  In order to manipulate the forum and avoid removal jurisdiction in a case against an out-of-state product manufacturer, plaintiffs will sometimes join a local doctor as a co-defendant.  One response could be to remove the case to federal court on the basis that the local doctor was fraudulently joined, a strategy that is legally sound and often successful when dealing with intermediaries in the chain of distribution, such as distributors and pharmacies.  Those kinds of defendants do not owe independent duties to plaintiffs and have zero involvement in the design, manufacturing, and labeling of drugs and medical devices (setting aside the potentially vexing issues presented by 3D-printed medical devices, but that is a topic for another day.)  Their citizenship therefore should be disregarded.

Fraudulent joinder with doctors is more complicated because doctors obviously do owe duties of care to their patients, so we tend to approach cases involving doctors also from the point of view of fraudulent misjoinder.  Under fraudulent misjoinder, the defendant argues that the federal court should disregard the citizenship of the local or non-diverse co-defendant because the claims against that defendant are distinct from the product liability claims against product manufacturer.  The case most often cited as the landmark for fraudulent misjoinder is Tapscott v. MS Dealer Serv. Corp., 77 F.3d 1353, 1360 (11th Cir. 1996)), and as the argument goes, product liability claims on the one hand are based on facts and law different from medical malpractice claims on the other hand.  It is as though two different lawsuits were improperly joined under one caption, which gives the district court discretion to disregard the citizenship of the non-diverse or local doctors and retain federal diversity jurisdiction.  (We discussed severance of malpractice claims from product liability claims here, although not in the context of federal jurisdiction.)

Some courts have been slow to adopt fraudulent misjoinder, sometimes citing Tapscott as a minority rule and often ignoring Tapscott altogether.  And that is where Sullivan v. Calvert comes in.  In Sullivan, the plaintiff’s surgical team allegedly left a piece of a catheter in the plaintiff’s bladder during a procedure to insert a transvaginal sling.  Op. at 2.  The Maryland plaintiff therefore sued multiple Maryland healthcare providers alleging medical malpractice for leaving the catheter behind, but she also separately pleaded product liability claims against the transvaginal sling manufacturer.  Id. at 3.Continue Reading Using Severance Under Rule 21 To Preserve Removal Jurisdiction

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