Opinion ID: 655303
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The District Court's Authority to Terminate the Case

Text: Under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 17 As we noted above, the JPML transferred a number of complaints that different plaintiffs had filed in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York to the District of New Jersey for consolidated pre-trial proceedings pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407. At oral argument, the question arose whether the district court possessed the authority to terminate the transferred cases under Rule 12(b)(6). Surprisingly, no judicial precedent addresses this point, so we take this opportunity to make clear that § 1407 empowers transferee courts to enter a dispositive pre-trial order terminating a case. 18 Section 1407 authorizes the consolidation and transfer of civil actions containing common questions of fact for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. 28 U.S.C. § 1407(a). The section further directs that the transferee court should remand the case to the transferor court unless it shall have been previously terminated, which suggests that Congress contemplated that transferee courts would dismiss cases in response to dispositive motions. The dismissal of a complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) constitutes such a pre-trial proceeding. 19 Apparently, transferee courts frequently terminate consolidated cases in practice. See In re Korean Air Lines Disaster, 829 F.2d 1171, 1176 n. 9 (D.C.Cir.1987) (noting that as of 1986 transferee courts had terminated over two-thirds of all cases subject to § 1407 proceedings), aff'd sub nom. Chan v. Korean Air Lines, Ltd., 490 U.S. 122, 109 S.Ct. 1676, 104 L.Ed.2d 113 (1989). Moreover, the practice comports with the rules the JPML promulgated pursuant to § 1407, see Rule 14(a) (Actions terminated in the transferee district court by valid judgment, including ... judgment of dismissal ..., shall not be remanded ... and shall be dismissed by the transferee district court.), as well as the views of commentators. See Manual for Complex Litigation, Second, § 31.122, at 254 (1985) (stating [t]he transferee judge has the power to terminate actions by rulings on motions under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12); Stanley A. Weigel, The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, Transferor Courts and Transferee Courts, 78 F.R.D. 575, 582-83 (1978). 20 In sum, we are satisfied that § 1407 empowered the district court to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). 8 21