IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA 

IN RE: GEISINGER HEALTH AND 

EVANGELICAL COMMUNITY 

HOSPITAL HEALTHCARE 

WORKERS ANTITRUST 

LITIGATION 

 No. 4:21-CV-00196 

 (Chief Judge Brann) 

MEMORANDUM OPINION 

JUNE 3, 2022 

In this antitrust class action suit against Geisinger Health and Evangelical 

Community Hospital—concerning the Defendants’ alleged agreement not to 

recruit each other’s skilled healthcare workers in central Pennsylvania—the parties 

have reached an impasse over a discovery dispute. Specifically, the Plaintiffs seek 

documents and data regarding all Geisinger and Evangelical employees from a 

specified period. The Defendants object to the requests as overbroad, arguing that 

the Plaintiffs’ definition of “employee” impermissibly includes (1) non-healthcare 

workers who are not part of the putative class, and (2) workers outside the relevant 

market of central Pennsylvania. The Court agrees with the Defendants and 

instructs the parties to proceed with discovery using a narrower definition of 

“employee” consistent with the term “Healthcare Workers” as defined in the 

Plaintiffs’ Consolidated Class Action Complaint. 

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I. Background

The Plaintiffs initiated this antitrust class action in February 2021, alleging 

that Geisinger and Evangelical entered a so-called “no poach” agreement whereby 

the two competing health systems, which dominate the healthcare market in central 

Pennsylvania, agreed not to recruit each other’s healthcare workers.1

 On March 18, 

2021, the Plaintiffs filed their Consolidated Class Action Complaint (“Amended 

Complaint”), which includes the following description of the suit: 

This class action challenges an illegal agreement between 

two competitors, Geisinger and Evangelical, not to 

recruit (or “poach”) each other’s physicians, nurses, 

psychologists, therapists, and other healthcare 

professionals (“Healthcare Workers”).2

 

In detailing the contours of the putative class, the Amended Complaint 

describes the defined “Healthcare Workers” as individuals with “specialized 

training and knowledge, including specialized schooling, advanced academic 

degrees, specialized occupational skills and knowledge, licensing and certification 

requirements, and specialized on-the-job training and experience.”3

 Further, the 

Amended Complaint provides that “[t]he No-Poach Agreement covered 

Defendants’ Healthcare Workers in a region in central Pennsylvania that includes 

1

 Doc. 1. 

2

 Doc. 46 ¶ 1.

3

 Id. ¶ 35; see also id. ¶ 36 (“Defendants view Healthcare Workers as possessing important 

skills and experiences that cannot be readily found in employees in other professional or 

occupational fields.”). 

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Union, Snyder, Northumberland, Montour, Lycoming, and Columbia counties.”4

Although the Plaintiffs allege that “[t]he No-Poach Agreement began at least as 

early as 2010, and may have existed even earlier,” they limited the “Class Period” 

to “January 2011 through such time as [the] Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct 

ceased.”5

The Defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint in 

May 2021,6

 which the Court denied in part on November 16, 2021.7 Shortly 

thereafter, the Plaintiffs served their Revised First Set of Requests for Production 

(“RFPs”), consisting of forty-four (44) separate requests.8

 The parties have been 

negotiating the scope of production since January 2022 and agreed on all aspects of 

the Plaintiffs’ RFPs, save one: the scope of employees on whom the Defendants 

must produce relevant documents and data.9

 

The Plaintiffs’ RFPs include twenty-four (24) requests that concern the 

Defendants’ “Employees,”10 which the Plaintiffs define as follows: 

[A]ny current or former executive, manager, salesperson, 

secretary, staff member, messenger, agent, worker, 

independent contractor, or other Person who is or was 

employed by, or did work in exchange for Compensation, 

4

 Id. ¶ 2. 5

 Id. ¶¶ 6, 67. 

6

 Doc. 51. 

7

 Doc. 66; Doc. 67. 

8

 Doc. 91-1, Ex. 1 (Plaintiffs’ RFPs). 

9

 Doc. 91 at 1, 5. 

10 Id. at 1 n.1 (“The disputed RFPs include Nos. 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 

25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, and 39.”). 

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for the responding Defendant during the Relevant 

Period.11 

The Defendants consider this definition impermissibly overbroad, as it includes 

workers who are not part of the proposed class and who are therefore unrelated to 

this suit.12 

The parties have worked to resolve this disagreement but without success. 

Geisinger and Evangelical provided the Plaintiffs with comprehensive lists of job 

titles for all their employees—which collectively totaled more than 8,500 

positions—so that the Plaintiffs could identify which positions fall under the term 

“Healthcare Workers” as defined in the Amended Complaint.13 The Plaintiffs 

reviewed the lists and identified approximately 8,100 positions that they believe 

should be included as “Healthcare Workers.”14 The Defendants objected, arguing 

that the Plaintiffs “includ[ed] personnel who are obviously not ‘skilled’ Healthcare 

Workers delivering patient care, such as ‘treasury analyst,’ ‘tax manager,’ ‘payroll 

clerk,’ ‘desktop support specialist,’ ‘supply chain contract coordinator,’ ‘graphic 

designer,’ and ‘underwriter.’”15 The Defendants then refused to make a 

counterproposal, leaving the parties at the present impasse.16 

11 Doc. 91-1, Ex. 1 (Plaintiffs’ RFPs) ¶ 13. 

12 Doc. 91 at 5–9. 

13 Id. at 6; see also id. at 4 (“Evangelical provided a list of 466 job titles and Geisinger provided 

lists of 7,918 and 3,597.”). 

14 Id. at 4, 6. 

15 Id. at 6. 

16 Id. at 4. 

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On May 13, 2022, the parties filed a joint letter requesting a telephonic 

discovery conference on the instant discovery dispute.17 The Court held the 

telephonic conference with counsel for the parties on June 1, 2022,18 and is now 

prepared to address the issue. 

II. Law

Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “[p]arties may obtain discovery 

regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense 

and proportional to the needs of the case.”19 Consistent with this language, the 

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit holds that “the scope of 

discovery under the Federal Rules is unquestionably broad.”20 That said, the Third 

Circuit explains that “this right is not unlimited and may be circumscribed.”21

Relevant here, in the class action context, courts generally do not permit plaintiffs 

to obtain discovery on entities and individuals outside the class definition and 

beyond the scope of the allegations in the complaint.22 This comports with the 

17 Doc. 91. 

18 Doc. 92. 

19 Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). 

20 Bayer AG v. Betachem, Inc., 173 F.3d 188, 191 (3d Cir. 1999). 

21 Id. 22 See, e.g., Thomas v. Cendant Mortgage, 2005 WL 579903, at *3 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 11, 2005) 

(denying discovery beyond class definition because “discovery is not intended as a fishing 

expedition permitting the speculative pleading of a case first and then pursuing discovery to 

support it”) (quoting Zuk v. Eastern Pa. Psychiatric Institute of the Medical College of Pa., 

103 F.3d 294, 299 (3d Cir. 1996)); Flores v. Bank of America, 2012 WL 6725842, at *2 

(S.D. Cal. Dec. 27, 2012) (denying discovery designed “to search for other customers of 

Defendants with claims similar to those of the Plaintiffs” as a “fishing expedition” that 

“would be unduly burdensome for Defendants to further respond”); Basset v. Tenn. Valley 

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Advisory Committee’s admonition that parties “have no entitlement to discovery to 

develop new claims or defenses that are not already identified in the pleadings.”23 

III. Analysis

The Plaintiffs’ requests for discovery concerning all Geisinger and 

Evangelical employees substantially exceed the scope of the Amended Complaint, 

which focuses exclusively on skilled workers involved in delivering patient care.24

Although they acknowledge the dichotomy between their discovery requests and 

Amended Complaint, the Plaintiffs nevertheless argue that they are entitled to this 

broader collection of employee information because “the materials sought are 

plainly relevant to [the] Defendants’ no-poach agreement.”25 The Court disagrees. 

The Plaintiffs identify three reasons why they believe information on all 

Geisinger and Evangelical employees is relevant to the case. First, the Plaintiffs 

assert “there is reason to believe that the illicit agreement between [the] 

Defendants may have extended beyond hiring and recruitment for healthcare 

workers.”26 But if that’s the case, the Plaintiffs should again amend their 

Complaint and provide allegations that support a broader class definition. They 

Authority, 2010 WL 2044545, at *2 (W.D. Ky. May 21, 2010) (denying discovery requests 

“to obtain the names of employees outside the definition of the class” as “beyond the present 

claims of this action, and therefore irrelevant”). 

23 Fed. R. Civ. P. 26, Advisory Committee Notes (2000 Amendments). 

24 See Doc. 46 ¶¶ 35–36. 

25 Doc. 91 at 2. 

26 Id. 

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cannot, however, submit discovery requests beyond the present claims of this 

action in hopes that the material produced will allow them to subsequently expand 

the scope of the litigation.27 Courts routinely reject such “fishing expeditions” as 

beyond the scope of permissible discovery.28

Second, the Plaintiffs argue that “even if [the] Defendants’ no-poach 

agreement targeted healthcare workers only, no-poach agreements between 

horizontal competitors for labor are nonetheless well-understood to have 

widespread effects both across groups of employees as well as firm-wide.”29 But, 

again, this theory of relevance extends beyond the current scope of the case and 

concerns a possible expansion of the putative class—albeit based here on a theory 

of indirect harm. Accordingly, as with the Plaintiffs’ first relevance rationale, this 

argument undermines the Plaintiffs’ position by affirming the invalidity of their 

overly broad discovery requests. 

Third, the Plaintiffs contend that compensation data “for unaffected 

employees, if there are any, can serve as a benchmark (when appropriate) to 

measure harm to the affected employees.”30 But as an initial matter, it is unclear 

27 See Basset, 2010 WL 2044545 at *2. 

28 See Thomas, 2005 WL 579903 at *3; Flores, 2012 WL 6725842 at *2. 

29 Doc. 91 at 2–3. 

30 Id. at 3. On this point, the Plaintiffs also claim that compensation data for unaffected 

employees (as well as “evidence regarding [the] Defendants’ hiring and recruitment practices 

in general”) will help “demonstrate the extent to which compensation for different jobs 

moves together, which informs how the harm of the no-poach agreement can be broadly felt 

across a company.” Id. But as with the Plaintiffs’ first two stated relevancy rationales, this 

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how data regarding a subset of employees unrelated to those in the putative class 

could serve as a useful benchmark for calculating any salary diminution 

attributable to the alleged no-poach agreement.31 Moreover, as the Defendants 

argue, the Plaintiffs’ “requests for all-employee data for benchmarking is 

unwarranted because the Defendants have already agreed to produce data for 

Healthcare Workers in Central Pennsylvania dating as far back as 2008, well 

before the alleged conspiracy began in 2011, which would permit benchmarking 

focused on the Healthcare Workers the Plaintiffs allege were harmed in this 

case.”32 Put differently, the data the Defendants have agreed to produce 

(concerning the relevant employees, but prior to the alleged agreement) will 

provide a more applicable benchmark than data concerning unrelated employees. 

During the June 1, 2022, status call with the Court, counsel for the Plaintiffs 

argued that the pre-2011 data is insufficient for benchmarking purposes because it 

is unclear when the alleged conspiracy began. But on this, the Plaintiffs again 

exceed the scope of the class definition in the Amended Complaint. Although the 

Plaintiffs allege that “[t]he No-Poach Agreement began at least as early as 2010, 

and may have existed even earlier,” they define the putative class as “[a]ll natural 

argument concerns harm felt by individuals outside the putative class, which places it beyond 

the scope of permissible discovery. 

31 See id. at 9 (describing the compensation data request as seeking “irrelevant data regarding 

non-healthcare workers, who are not part of the putative class or [the] Plaintiffs’ claims”). 

32 Id. (cleaned up).

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persons who worked at [Geisinger] or [Evangelical] from January 2011 through 

such time as the Defendants’ anticompetitive conduct ceased (‘Class Period’).”33 In 

so doing, the Plaintiffs set the parameters for the period in which the alleged 

anticompetitive conduct occurred. If the Plaintiffs believe they mistakenly defined 

the class period too narrowly, that is an issue that must be addressed at the 

pleadings stage; they cannot now use discovery to broaden the scope of the suit 

beyond the class definition and class period provided in the Amended Complaint.34 

IV. Conclusion

For purposes of discovery, the Plaintiffs are limited by the allegations in the 

Amended Complaint. The Plaintiffs construed this case as concerning skilled 

healthcare workers involved in delivering patient care. Accordingly, to the extent 

the Plaintiffs seek discovery on Geisinger and Evangelical employees, they are 

limited to documents and data related to those skilled healthcare workers. 

An appropriate Order follows.

 BY THE COURT: 

s/ Matthew W. Brann 

 Matthew W. Brann 

 Chief United States District Judge 

33 Doc. 46 ¶¶ 6, 46. 

34 See Thomas, 2005 WL 579903 at *3; Flores, 2012 WL 6725842 at *2; Basset, 2010 WL 

2044545 at *2. 

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