Premier Comp Solutions, LLC v. UPMC, ___ F.3d ___ (3d Cir. 2020). Under Rule 15 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, amendments to pleadings are liberally granted. But when a Scheduling Order sets a deadline for amending pleadings, Rule 16(b)(4) requires “good cause” for an amendment. In this case, plaintiff sought to add a defendant after an amendment deadline had passed (and after that deadline had been extended once). Plaintiff’s motion relied only on Rule 15’s “liberally granted” standard. When the UPMC defendants opposed the motion and called...

In re Suboxone Antitrust Litig., ___ F.3d ___ (3d Cir. 2020). In this antitrust class action case, direct purchasers of Suboxone, a prescription pharmaceutical used to treat addiction to opioids, sued its manufacturer (“Reckitt”) for what Judge Shwartz summarized as “anticompetitive conduct that impeded the entry of generic versions of the drug into the market,” in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 2. The District Court certified a class. Reckitt appealed, but the Third Circuit affirmed, applying the abuse of discretion standard of review. Reckitt...

Bank Leumi U.S. v. Kloss, ___ N.J. ___ (2020). As discussed here, this was a case involving a certified question from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and for the second time in the last month, Justice Fernandez-Vina wrote the Court’s opinion. The certified question was “When a party filed, in lieu of an answer, a motion to dismiss under Rule 4:6-2(e) for failure to state a claim, and the court dismissed with prejudice, is that party subject to claim preclusion when—in a later suit that it files arising from the same transactional facts—the defendant asserts the entire...