Opinion ID: 2976491
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: B&H’s Discovery Claim

Text: “When reviewing a district court’s decision to limit discovery, we will intervene only if the decision was an abuse of discretion resulting in substantial prejudice.” Hahn v. Star Bank, 190 F.3d 708, 719 (6th Cir. 1999).
As with its antitrust claims, B&H’s appeal of the district court’s discovery order, which limited B&H’s efforts to obtain broad categories of information from nonparty BCBSM, suffers from fatal flaws. W&F correctly observes that, although B&H devoted a large portion of its 8 In fact, in its initial Complaint, B&H did allege that W&F “engaged in price fixing to deny B&H access to the relevant market,” J.A. at 22 (Compl. at ¶ 14), but it dropped this claim in its Amended Complaint and accordingly may not rely on that theory. See Drake v. City of Detroit, No. 06-1817, 2008 WL 482283, at  (6th Cir. Feb. 21, 2008) (stating that a prior “complaint is a nullity, because an amended complaint supercedes all prior complaints”); see also 6 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT, ARTHUR R. MILLER & MARY KAY KANE, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 1476 (2d ed. 1990) (stating that “[a] pleading that has been amended under Rule 15(a) supersedes the pleading it modifies” and that “[o]nce an amended pleading is interposed, the original pleading no longer performs any function in the case”). 9 Terming the SUPPORT program a “provider-controlled contracting network,” or “PCN,” B&H asserts that in “an antitrust analysis of the Support PCN under Statement 9, the first question is whether the Support PCN should be analyzed as per se illegal or under the rule of reason.” Appellant Br. at 28. B&H then declares that “the Support PCN is a cartel or a ‘sham’ network which is per se illegal because ‘antitrust law condemns naked agreements among competitors which fix prices or allocate markets.’” Id. (quoting Statement 9, Health Care Enforcement Guidelines at 135). Finally, B&H argues that “under a rule of reason analysis pursuant to Statements 8 and 9, the issues are four: (1) determine if the horizontal price fixing agreement is ancillary . . . .” Appellant Br. at 32 (emphasis added). Nos. 04-2438; 06-1338/1339 B & H Medical, L.L.C. et al. v. ABP Admin. Inc. et al. Page 9 appellate brief to complaints about the discovery process, nowhere did B&H include a discussion of the standard of review for such claims. As it apparently did before the district court, on appeal B&H simply asserts that the additional discovery was necessary, without offering any reasonable explanation for why information possessed by BCBSM would have assisted B&H’s efforts to define properly a relevant market and estimate the percentage of DME/P&O business foreclosed by the agreement that established the SUPPORT network as the exclusive source for DME/P&O services for certain employees and retirees of Chrysler, Ford, and the MPSERS. Indeed, much of B&H’s “argument” relating to the discovery issue appears in its “Statement of the Case” portion of its brief, where B&H declares that it “was denied legitimate discovery in the proceedings below.” Appellant Br. at 7 (emphasis added). We affirm the district court’s discovery order because B&H has failed to demonstrate either that the district court abused its discretion in limiting B&H’s efforts to obtain information from nonparty BCBSM or that its meritless antitrust claims were substantially prejudiced by the limited discovery.