Sullivan et al v. Fluidmaster, Inc.

Filing 110

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER Signed by the Honorable Robert M. Dow, Jr. on 6/25/2015. Mailed notice(cdh, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
IN RE: FLUIDMASTER, INC., WATER
CONNECTOR COMPONENTS PRODUCTS
LIABILITY LITIGATION

)
)
)

Case No. 1:14-cv-05696
MDL No. 2575
Judge Robert M. Dow, Jr.

ORDER
Before the Court is Defendant Fluidmaster’s objection [101] to Magistrate Judge
Gilbert’s May 21, 2015 order [95]. For the reasons set forth below, Defendant’s objections are
overruled.
STATEMENT
On November 12, 2014, while the Rensel case was still pending before Judge Percy
Anderson in the Central District of California, Judge Anderson issued an order striking the
Rensel Plaintiffs’ class action allegations as a sanction for their destructive testing of certain
evidence (i.e., coupling nuts on various water-supply lines) purportedly relevant to Fluidmaster’s
defense. After the case was transferred to this Court as part of the ongoing MDL litigation, the
Rensel Plaintiffs moved to vacate Judge Anderson’s November 12, 2014 order, arguing that the
sanction was unwarranted. This Court referred the matter to Magistrate Judge Gilbert, who
ordered briefing on the issue. After careful consideration and several interactions with the
parties, Magistrate Judge Gilbert granted the Rensel Plaintiffs’ motion to vacate [95]. In his
order, Judge Gilbert explained that, in view of new, relevant information that came to light after
the briefing before Judge Anderson was complete, the more prudent course is to vacate Judge
Anderson’s ruling (and the significant sanction that followed from it) and to allow this Court to
determine whether the Rensel Plaintiffs’ claims should proceed as a class action based on a full
record. Defendant Fluidmaster filed an objection to that order [101], arguing that Magistrate

Judge Gilbert’s order should be set aside because he did not expressly state that Judge
Anderson’s order was wrong and that such a statement stands as a prerequisite to vacating a prior
judge’s order under the law of the case doctrine.
As an initial matter, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72(a) provides a 14-day period
within which to object to a Magistrate Judge’s orders on nondispositive matters. Defendant
Fluidmaster filed its objection on June 8, 2015—19 days after Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s May
21 order. The Federal Rule is explicit: “A party may not assign as error a defect in the order not
timely objected to.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(a); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a) (explaining how to
compute time for time periods stated in days). Because Defendant Fluidmaster’s objection is
untimely, it is overruled.
Moreover, even if the Court were to consider Defendant’s objection as timely, it would
nonetheless overrule it. As Defendant notes, in the MDL context, a transferee district court
judge can set aside a decision by a transferor district court judge “if he has a conviction at once
strong and reasonable that the earlier ruling was wrong, and if rescinding it would not cause
undue harm to the party that had benefited from it.” Avitia v. Metropolitan Club, 49 F.3d 1219,
1227 (7th Cir. 1995) (citing Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618 n.8 (1983)). In the same
decision, the Seventh Circuit explained that the law of the case presumption that a prior ruling
“will be adhered to throughout the suit” “is no more than a presumption, one whose strength
varies with the circumstances; it is not a straitjacket.” Id. The court of appeals further observed
that “if the ruling in question was by the same court (and regardless of whether the same judge or
panel or a previous judge or panel of that court made the ruling), the duty of adherence is less
rigid.” Id. Contrary to Defendant’s contention, the Seventh Circuit did not hold in Avitia that
the overruling judge must expressly state that the originating judge was wrong; the Seventh

2

Circuit merely articulated the standard of review by which the transferor court must abide in
assessing rulings from a transferor court.
Magistrate Judge Gilbert followed this standard, by finding that (1) Judge Anderson’s
ruling “clearly was colored by Fluidmaster’s argument that Plaintiffs’ testing of the coupling
nuts severely impaired the company’s ability to defend itself,” (2) the Rensel Plaintiffs learned
new information after filing their opposition brief, and there is “no question” that this
information is “at the heart of Fluidmaster’s defense in this case,” and (3) Judge Anderson struck
the hearing on the motion to vacate without notice and without an opportunity to allow Rensel
Plaintiffs to present the new evidence. [95, at 6–8.] True, Magistrate Judge Gilbert expressed
uncertainty as to whether Judge Anderson would have resolved the case differently had he
considered Plaintiffs’ new information (stating that Judge Anderson’s decision “may have been
impacted” by these arguments), but Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s reticence in the mind-reading
arena in no way dilutes his central finding, which is that the decision reached by Judge Anderson
must be set aside because it was rendered without the benefit of the new information that became
available after briefing was complete and that might dictate a different result. Another way of
saying this, using the parlance suggested by Defendant, is that Judge Anderson’s ruling is
“wrong” because it was reached prematurely without the benefit of the more complete record
now available. Still another way of making the same point would be to say that even if Judge
Anderson’s ruling were correct based on the information presented to him at the time, it has
since been rendered unjustifiable (and thus reversible under law of the case principles) given the
additional information now known to this Court.

No matter which of these alternative

descriptions one prefers, to avoid any doubt, the Court exercises its discretion (see Fed. R. Civ.
P. 72(a)) to modify Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s decision to expressly state its conclusion that “the

3

earlier ruling was wrong, and [that] rescinding it would not cause undue harm to the party that
had benefited from it.” Avitia, 49 F.3d at 1227.1
Defendant Fluidmaster also argues that the Rensel Plaintiffs never asked the transferor
District Court to reconsider its order, thus “depriv[ing] the judge most familiar with the complex
facts of this case * * * an opportunity to review the supplemental arguments [the Rensel]
Plaintiffs now assert are crucial.” [101, at 4.] But Defendant provides no legal support for the
proposition that a transferee court can revisit a transferor judge’s order only if the transferor
judge has had an opportunity to reconsider the order, and thus Rensel Plaintiffs’ failure to file a
motion to reconsider Judge Anderson’s order is of no consequence here. Neither is the Ninth
Circuit’s February 25, 2015 denial of the Rensel Plaintiffs’ Rule 23(f) petition [see 66-1].
Importantly, the Ninth Circuit denied Plaintiffs’ Rule 23(f) petition as moot, obviously aware of
the transfer of that case to this Court for coordinated MDL proceedings and the Rensel Plaintiffs’
ability to seek relief via the still-active putative class action in this proceeding. Regardless, the
Ninth Circuit’s refusal to consider the Rensel Plaintiffs’ Rule 23(f) appeal is not a binding
decision on the merits that impacts this Court’s ability to rule on the motion to vacate. See Blair
v. Equifax Check Servs., Inc., 181 F.3d 832, 833–34 (7th Cir. 1999) (likening an appellate court’s
decision regarding a Rule 23(f) appeal to the Supreme Court’s discretion regarding a petition for
certiorari, wherein a refusal to grant certiorari is not an affirmation on the merits of the
underlying decision).

1

As Magistrate Judge Gilbert stressed, questions concerning (1) whether evidence was compromised or
destroyed by “destructive testing” and (2) whether any sanction will be appropriate at the time that such
questions are resolved remain open and await disposition on a full record at later stages of the case. For
now, the Court simply concludes, affirming Judge Gilbert’s ruling, that the prior judge’s ruling was
premature and therefore erroneous on the facts of record at this time.

4

For these reasons, Defendant Fluidmaster’s objections [101] to Magistrate Judge
Gilbert’s May 21, 2015 order are overruled.

Date: June 25, 2015

____________________________________
Robert M. Dow, Jr.
United States District Judge

5