In In Re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation, Case No. No. 20-3075 (Sixth Cir. April 15, 2020), the Court issued a sharp rebuke to the federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation over the opioid crisis, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said a pretrial ruling by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster was a “clear abuse of discretion.” The panel overturned Polster?s decision in advance of a trial?scheduled to take place on November 9, 2020 with a dozen pharmacies as defendants?to allow plaintiffs to add new claims more than a year after a deadline to do so.
The pharmacy defendants, who include CVS and Walgreens, had petitioned the Sixth Circuit to overturn Polster?s ruling, dated Nov. 19, 2019, along with two subsequent decisions, insisting that he had violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. On September 23, 2020, the Sixth Circuit agreed with the pharmacies, granting their petition for writ of mandamus. “Not a circuit court in the country, so far as we can tell, would allow a district court to amend its scheduling order under these circumstances,” wrote Circuit Judge Raymond Kethledge. “Respectfully, the district court?s mistake was to think it had authority to disregard the rules? requirements in the pharmacies? cases in favor of enhancing the efficiency of the MDL as a whole.”
MDLs, Kethledge wrote, “are not some kind of judicial border country, where the rules are few and the law rarely makes an appearance.”