Source: https://casetext.com/case/barash-v-tecumseh-prods-co-in-re-refrigerant-compressors-antitrust-litig
Timestamp: 2020-07-14 09:49:00
Document Index: 483508874

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1407', '§ 1291', '§ 1407', '§ 1291', '§ 1291', '§ 3914', '§ 1291', '§ 1291', '§ 1292', '§ 1292', '§ 3914']

Gateway KGMP Development, Inc. v. Tecumseh Products Co., 731 F.3d 586 | Casetext Search + Citator
Gateway KGMP Development, Inc. v. Tecumseh Products Co.
Some judges have elected to treat consolidated complaints merely as an "administrative summary" of the claims…
MEMORANDUM OPINIONThis civil rights action stems from a series of "bar checks" at plaintiffs' restaurant in…
Full title:In re: REFRIGERANT COMPRESSORS ANTITRUST LITIGATION (13-1608), Movant…
731 F.3d 586 (6th Cir. 2013)
holding that an "amended complaint supersedes an earlier complaint for all purposes."
Summary of this case from Howard-Hill v. Spence
Nos. 13–1608 13–1615 13–1617 13–1624 13–1625 13–1628 13–1631.
In re REFRIGERANT COMPRESSORS ANTITRUST LITIGATION (13–1608), Movant. Gateway KGMP Development, Incorporated, et al., Plaintiffs, Air Cooling Energy Corporation (13–1615); Mark A. Barash (13–1617); Nathan Levi Esquerra (13–1624); F.G. Farah and Partners, LLC (13–1625); Strong Electric (13–1628); and Saad Wholesale, Inc. (13–1631), Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. Tecumseh Products Company, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
Before: BATCHELDER, Chief Judge; , Circuit Judge; HOOD, District Judge.
After the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation brought these plaintiffs and their separate lawsuits together, see28 U.S.C. § 1407, many of the plaintiffs elected to consolidate all of their claims in a single complaint. The district court entered an order dismissing the claims raised by some of the plaintiffs. But the order left intact several claims raised by other plaintiffs in the same complaint. Does this order amount to a “final” decision from which the dismissed plaintiffs may appeal? 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We hold that it does not and dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Plaintiffs normally may decide where to file their lawsuits. But when different plaintiffs file similar cases in different districts, keeping the cases separate forces district court judges to duplicate each other's labors. Congress empowered a federal multidistrict panel to address this problem by transferring overlapping cases to a single district if the cases involve “one or more common questions of fact” and if the transfer “will be for the convenience of parties and witnesses and will promote the just and efficient conduct of [the] actions.” 28 U.S.C. § 1407(a). The transfer unifies the cases for “pretrial proceedings.” Id. Once these proceedings conclude, the multidistrict panel must remand each transferred case that has not “been previously terminated” to the originating district for trial. Id.; see also Lexecon v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26, 118 S.Ct. 956, 140 L.Ed.2d 62 (1998) (holding that, because the remand requirement is absolute, the transferee court may not invoke the change-of-venue statute to assign transferred cases to itself for trial).
Today's multidistrict controversy arose when manufacturers of compressors—devices that cool the air in refrigerators and the water in water coolers—allegedly violated federal antitrust laws by fixing prices and dividing markets. Several buyers filed lawsuits against the manufacturers in district courts across the country. The plaintiffs included both “direct purchasers” (those who bought their compressors from the manufacturer) and “indirect purchasers” (those who bought their compressors from intermediaries such as retailers).
The multidistrict panel centralized pretrial proceedings in the Eastern District of Michigan. Once in the Eastern District, the indirect purchasers filed a single “consolidated amended complaint” that combined all of their allegations. The direct purchasers did likewise.
For the most part, a party may appeal only a district court's “final decisions.” 28 U.S.C. § 1291. When a single action presents multiple claims or involves multiple parties, a district court ruling that disposes of only some claims or only some parties is ordinarily not “final.” This general rule curbs the inefficiency and delay of multiple appeals from a single action.
But what constitutes a single action for purposes of § 1291? At least three broad-brush scenarios exist. The first is the most frequent and the easiest to resolve. When a plaintiff brings different claims—or for that matter when multiple plaintiffs bring different claims—in the same complaint, they have brought just one action, and a ruling that fails to dispose of the whole complaint is not final. See, e.g., Talamini v. Allstate Ins. Co., 470 U.S. 1067, 105 S.Ct. 1824, 85 L.Ed.2d 125 (1985) (mem.); Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey, 351 U.S. 427, 431–32, 76 S.Ct. 895, 100 L.Ed. 1297 (1956).
Things get trickier with the second possibility—when separate actions filed by separate plaintiffs in the same district court become consolidated. Some federal appellate courts have concluded that, after the cases are consolidated, they retain their separate identities, others that they always merge, and still others that they sometimes merge and sometimes remain distinct. See15A Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 3914.7 (2d ed.1992). Our circuit's test focuses on how the consolidation occurred. When a court consolidates two cases on its own, we have concluded, the consolidated cases generally “remain separate actions;” thus, a district court's disposal of one of the cases normally supports an immediate appeal, even if the other consolidated case remains live. Beil v. Lakewood Eng'g & Mfg. Co., 15 F.3d 546, 551 (6th Cir.1994). But when the plaintiff files an amended complaint that unifies claims initially brought separately, the cases merge into a single action so far as § 1291 is concerned; one claim cannot come up on appeal until the district court disposes of the whole complaint or the district court provides a Rule 54 certification. See Klyce v. Ramirez, 852 F.2d 568, 1988 WL 74155, at *3 (6th Cir.1988) (unpublished).
This distinction respects the general rule that, “when a plaintiff files a complaint in federal court and then voluntarily amends the complaint, courts look to the amended complaint to determine jurisdiction.” Rockwell Int'l Corp. v. United States, 549 U.S. 457, 473–74, 127 S.Ct. 1397, 167 L.Ed.2d 190 (2007). The test also makes sense. An amended complaint supersedes an earlier complaint for all purposes. Pac. Bell Tel. Co. v. Linkline Commc'ns, Inc., 555 U.S. 438, 456 n. 4, 129 S.Ct. 1109, 172 L.Ed.2d 836 (2009). If combining claims in the initial complaint unifies them into a single action, combining claims in an amended complaint must unify them into a single action as well. On top of that, the test is easy to administer, and “administrative simplicity is a major virtue in a jurisdictional statute.” Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77, 94, 130 S.Ct. 1181, 175 L.Ed.2d 1029 (2010). An indeterminate finality line would waste judicial resources by routinely spurring protective appeals from non-final orders. Thus, if this were a run-of-the-mine single-district lawsuit—if all of the plaintiffs had filed their initial complaints in the Eastern District of Michigan—it would be easy to resolve. By replacing the separate original complaints with a consolidated amended complaint, the plaintiffs would have combined their lawsuits into one action. Because the district court's order did not dispose of all the parties and all the claims in the amended complaint, its order would be non-final and non-appealable.
Because each transferred case comes with its own pleadings, a multidistrict transfer threatens to submerge the transferee district court in paper. A common solution to this difficulty, one adopted in this case, is for the plaintiffs to assemble a “master complaint” that reflects all of their allegations. In many cases, the master complaint is not meant to be a pleading with legal effect but only an administrative summary of the claims brought by all the plaintiffs. When plaintiffs file a master complaint of this variety, each individual complaint retains its separate legal existence. See, e.g., In re Nuvaring Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 4:08MD1964 RWS, 2009 WL 2425391, at *2 (E.D.Mo. Aug. 6, 2009) (“[T]he filing of the master consolidated complaint in this action was simply meant to be an administrative tool to place in one document all of the claims at issue in this litigation. Neither Plantiffs ... nor I ... contemplated that Rule 12(b) motion practice would be pursued ... against the master complaint.”); In re Propulsid Prods. Liab. Litig., 208 F.R.D. 133, 142 (E.D.La.2002) (“[T]he master complaint [filed in this case] should not be given the same effect as an ordinary complaint. Instead, it should be considered as only an administrative device to aid efficiency and economy.”).
But, in other cases, the court and the parties go further. They treat the master complaint as an operative pleading that supersedes the individual complaints. The master complaint, not the individual complaints, is served on defendants. The master complaint is used to calculate deadlines for defendants to file their answers. And the master complaint is examined for its sufficiency when the defendants file a motion to dismiss. See, e.g., In re Katrina Canal Breaches Litig., 309 Fed.Appx. 836, 838 (5th Cir.2009) (“[The plaintiff's] individual complaint was superseded, and ... any arguments or claims that appear in [the] individual complaint but not in the Master Complaint were waived.”); In re Zimmer Nexgen Knee Implant Prods. Liab. Litig., No. MDL 2272, 2012 WL 3582708, at *4 (N.D.Ill. Aug. 16, 2012) (“MDL courts have entertained motions to dismiss ‘master’ or ‘consolidated’ complaints....”); see generally Diana E. Murphy, Unified and Consolidated Complaints in Multidistrict Litigation, 132 F.R.D. 597 (1991).
The use of one term to describe two different types of pleadings leads to confusion. Just so here. Plaintiffs often file something labeled a “master complaint” without saying whether they mean to file an operative pleading or an administrative summary, prompting satellite litigation about the status of the documents submitted to the court. See, e.g., Nuvaring, 2009 WL 2425391, at *1–2;Propulsid, 208 F.R.D. at 140–42. To ward off confusion, lawyers might do well to make plain what they have in mind when they use the label “master complaint.” One option is to use “administrative complaint” and “administrative answer” for legally inert summaries of pleadings, and to use “consolidated complaint” and “consolidated answer” for pleadings meant to have legal effect.
In the first place, § 1291 is one statute, and it sets forth one final-order rule. The finality requirement warrants uniform treatment, not a meaning that varies from case to case. Cf. In re Lindsey, 726 F.3d 857, 858–59, No. 12–6362, 2013 WL 4055273, *2 (6th Cir. Aug. 13, 2013) (“[W]e see no good reason to have ‘final’ mean one thing in [bankruptcy] cases and another in [ordinary civil cases].”).
Developing special jurisdictional rules for multidistrict cases would also create administrative problems. Although “competent counsel should readily recognize” them, finality defects are easy to miss—which is why “this procedural error ... has been frequently overlooked by a large number of experienced attorneys and judges.” Talamini, 470 U.S. at 1069, 105 S.Ct. 1824 (Stevens, J., concurring). We would only proliferate unauthorized exercises of appellate jurisdiction by developing complex finality rules that vary from context to context. Far better to keep things simple.
The six buyers' main reason for treating multidistrict cases differently is that they would experience hardship if they had to wait until the end of pretrial proceedings to appeal. While we appreciate the point, it does not carry the day. For one, hardship by itself offers no basis for disregarding a jurisdictional rule established by statute. See Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 127 S.Ct. 2360, 168 L.Ed.2d 96 (2007). For another, rulemaking under §§ 1292(e) and 2072, not judicial expansion of the concept of finality, is the “preferred means for determining whether and when prejudgment orders should be immediately appealable.” Mohawk Indus., Inc. v. Carpenter, 558 U.S. 100, 113, 130 S.Ct. 599, 175 L.Ed.2d 458 (2009). For a final reason, other routes to an appellate court ordinarily will reduce any hardship that plaintiffs might face. Civil Rule 54(b) permits the district court to “direct entry of a final judgment as to one or more, but fewer than all, claims or parties” when it “expressly determines that there is no just reason for delay.” And § 1292(b) permits the district court to certify an interlocutory appeal when “[its] order involves a controlling question of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion and ... an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.” The Eastern District concluded that these criteria had not been met in the case at hand, suggesting that a competing interest—the inconvenience of piecemeal appeals—outweighs any hardship to the plaintiffs.
Nor do we hold that the filing of a consolidated complaint in a multidistrict case merges the plaintiffs' actions permanently. Our decision is limited to the duration of the pretrial proceedings; we do not question the principle that, when the pretrial phase ends and cases not yet terminated return to their originating courts for trial, the plaintiffs' actions resume their separate identities. Cf. Federal Practice & Procedure § 3914.7 (suggesting that, when one part of a once-unitary case is severed and “transferred to a different court,” that part should be considered a separate action for the purpose of determining finality).
holding that the filing of a consolidated complaint had the effect of merging the consolidated actions, but only for "the duration of the pretrial proceedings," and emphasizing that "when the pretrial phase ends and cases not yet terminated return to their originating courts for trial [under Section 1407], the plaintiffs' actions [would] resume their separate identities"
finding that a consolidated class complaint filed in an MDL "superseded any prior individual complaints"
finding that a consolidated class complaint filed in an MDL “superseded any prior individual complaints”
noting that in many MDLs, "the master complaint is not meant to be a pleading with legal effect but only an administrative summary of the claims brought by all the plaintiffs"
opining why indirect purchasers' broad standing argument "should" be rejected as a matter of policy
Summary of this case from In re Lithium Ion Batteries Antitrust Litig.