Opinion ID: 162918
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Operative Complaint

Text: 42 In connection with P & G I 's remand to the district court to reconsider the tortious interference claim, P & G argues that the mandate reinstated this claim as alleged not only under P & G's Second Amended Complaint, but also in its Third Amended Complaint. Some procedural background is necessary to follow P & G's argument. After Amway and the Distributor Defendants moved to dismiss P & G's tortious interference count from the Second Amended Complaint for failure to state a claim, the district court granted the motion but also gave P & G fifteen days to amend only that count of the second amended complaint. Aplt's App. at 1098-99. 43 Within the fifteen days, P & G served a Third Amended Complaint that did much more than simply amend that count. The Third Amended Complaint amended several of P & G's claims. For example, P & G expanded the Lanham Act claim to include a claim for product disparagement. See Aplt's App. at 189-212. 44 After P & G submitted the Third Amended Complaint, the district court again dismissed the tortious interference claim. The court also rejected P & G's attempt to add an additional product disparagement claim. In so doing, the district court stated that [P & G's] suits and claims for ... violation of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, negligent supervision, and vicarious liability, may proceed as outlined in the second amended complaint. Id. at 1110. The district court also notified P & G that any further amendments to the second amended complaint must be sought through a motion to amend. Id. at 1110-11. P & G sought neither to further amend its complaint, nor to appeal this ruling. 45 Curiously, P & G insists that when, in P & G I, we reversed the district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim for tortious interference, we revived the tortious interference claim as pled in P & G's far-reaching Third Amended Complaint, also revitalizing P & G's attendant product disparagement claims. We disagree. By amending its Third Amended Complaint, P & G attempted to evade the clear instruction of the district court to amend only one particular count of its complaint (the tortious interference claim). P & G has not appealed the district court's limited grant of leave to amend, and we cannot condone its attempt to avoid the implication of that ruling. As indicated above, in P & G I, this court rather generously supplied P & G with its only viable Lanham Act claim, specifically a commercial activities claim under § 43(a). In contesting the district court's application of our mandate, P & G has unremittingly sought to relitigate and reassert previously adjudicated issues. See United States v. Connell, 6 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir.1993) (declaring that litigants should not ordinarily be allowed to take serial bites at the appellate apple).