Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cv-00415/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cv-00415-4/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 15:2 Antitrust Litigation

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

COLLEEN EASTMAN, et al.,

Plaintiffs,

v.

QUEST DIAGNOSTICS 

INCORPORATED,

Defendant.

Case No. 15-cv-00415-WHO 

ORDER ON DISCOVERY DISPUTE

Re: Dkt. No. 62

This Order concerns the discovery dispute set out in the joint letter the parties filed on 

December 31, 2015. Dkt. No. 62. Some background is necessary before addressing the parties’

current dispute.

On June 9, 2015, I dismissed plaintiffs’ original complaint with leave to amend. Dkt. No. 

42. On June 15, 2015, plaintiffs filed an administrative motion seeking an order requiring Quest 

to produce documents responsive to seven broad document requests. Dkt. No. 43. I denied the 

motion, observing that plaintiffs had not yet stated a claim, and that this is not a case where all the 

information necessary to plead a plausible claim is in the hands of the defendant. Dkt. No. 45.

Plaintiffs submitted a first amended complaint, which I again dismissed with leave to 

amend. Dkt. Nos. 46, 59. In the dismissal order, I denied plaintiffs’ request to supplement the 

record with a letter (filed nearly three weeks after the hearing on the motion to dismiss) 

documenting how they had not been allowed to obtain the requested discovery from Quest. Id. at 

9 n.3. Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal order to the Ninth Circuit but voluntarily dismissed the 

appeal on December 23, 2015, within two weeks of filing it, after the Ninth Circuit noted that its

jurisdiction over the appeal was questionable. Dkt. Nos. 60, 63. 

Plaintiffs have now returned to this Court with another demand for pre-complaint

discovery. Dkt. No. 62. They seek the production of Quest’s fee-for-service pricing for the years 

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

2013 and 2015 for six geographic areas (Northern California, Southern California, New York, 

Portland, Seattle, and Tampa) and for twenty-one different routine diagnostic testing codes. Id. at 

2. Quest opposes. Id. at 3-4. 

There is nothing about plaintiffs’ current discovery request or the current circumstances of 

this case that warrants a different result from the last time I decided this issue. Plaintiffs remain 

without a complaint on file that states a claim. As I stated in denying plaintiffs’ last discovery 

request, “[t]he Supreme Court has cautioned against subjecting antitrust defendants to burdensome 

discovery before plaintiffs have stated plausible claims to relief.” Dkt. No. 45; see also Bell Atl. 

Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 558 (2007) (“[I]t is one thing to be cautious before dismissing an 

antitrust complaint in advance of discovery, but quite another to forget that proceeding to antitrust 

discovery can be expensive . . . [A] district court must retain the power to insist upon some 

specificity in pleading before allowing a potentially massive factual controversy to proceed.”) 

(internal citations and quotation marks omitted); Sky Angel U.S., LLC v. Nat’l Cable Satellite 

Corp., 296 F.R.D. 1, 2-3 (D.D.C. 2013) (“[Plaintiff] points to no case in which a court has granted 

pre-complaint discovery in order to identify the underlying conduct that gives rise to a cause of 

action . . . The Rule 8 screening function would be rendered toothless if [plaintiff] were entitled to 

pre-complaint discovery in order to fish for conduct that gives rise to an antitrust violation.”). 

While plaintiffs’ current discovery request is somewhat narrower than their previous one, the same 

principles continue to apply. 

Further, this still is not a case where all the information necessary to plead a plausible 

claim is in the hands of the defendant. See Dkt. No. 45. Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint failed 

to plausibly establish causal antitrust injury not only because of the lack of specific pricing 

information, but also because their “attempt to plead Quest’s alleged overcharging in the 

plan/outpatient market [was] at odds with their repeated emphasis on how Quest benefits from its 

‘substantial economies of scale’ and ‘large cost advantages’ over its competitors.” Dkt. No. 59 at 14. 

I need not decide the issue now, but I assume that plaintiffs could plausibly establish monopoly 

overcharging in this case, even in the absence of specific pricing information, by pleading other 

facts that supported such an inference. I do not see how such facts would be exclusively in the 

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

“custody and control” of Quest. Dkt. No. 62 at 2. 

Nor is it clear to me how the pricing information plaintiffs now seek would be sufficient, 

on its own, to enable them to cure the deficiencies in their first amended complaint. Plaintiffs 

would still lack pricing information for Quest’s competitors in Northern California and elsewhere, 

and would still lack a coherent and plausible explanation as to why it is appropriate to assume that 

Quest’s pricing is attributable to its alleged antitrust violations. 

For all these reasons, plaintiffs’ request for pre-complaint discovery is DENIED. Plaintiffs 

may have until January 13, 2016 to file their second amended complaint

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: January 6, 2016

______________________________________

WILLIAM H. ORRICK

United States District Judge

Case 3:15-cv-00415-WHO Document 65 Filed 01/06/16 Page 3 of 3