Meade v. Parsley

Filing 206

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER denying Plaintiff's 202 MOTION to Stay all Proceedings, Continue Trial Setting and for Leave to Conduct Additional Discovery. Signed by Judge John T. Copenhaver, Jr. on 4/15/2011. (cc: attys) (tmh)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF WEST VIRGINIA
AT CHARLESTON

SHIRLEAN MEADE and ELMER MEADE,
Plaintiffs,
v.

Civil Action No. 2:09-cv-00388

DEIDRE E. PARSLEY, D.O.; WYETH,
INC., doing business as Wyeth;
SCHWARZ PHARMA, INC.; PLIVA,
INC.; and JOHN DOE DEFENDANTS
#1-6
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Pending is plaintiffs’ motion to stay all proceedings,
to continue the trial setting, and for leave to conduct
additional discovery, filed March 27, 2011.

I.

This action concerns plaintiff Shirlean Meade’s use of
the drug metoclopramide and her injuries allegedly resulting
therefrom.

In support of their motion to stay, to continue, and

for additional discovery, plaintiffs assert two grounds.

First,

they contend that a set of consolidated cases currently pending
before the United States Supreme Court, which involve tort claims
against metoclopramide manufacturers, will necessarily affect the
parties’ posture in this case.

See PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, No.

09-993, consolidated with Actavis, Inc. v. Demahy, No. 09-1501;
Actavis Elizabeth, LLC v. Mensing, No. 09-1039, 131 S. Ct. 817
(2010).

Second, plaintiffs point out that former defendant

PLIVA, Inc. (“PLIVA”)1 recently “revealed that the label
accompanying its [metoclopramide] products after 2004 (and during
the relevant time period in the instant case) did not in fact
reflect the 2004 label changes made by the brand-name
manufacturer of [metoclopramide], meaning that all parties in the
instant suit conducted discovery under false assumptions.”
(Pls.’ Mot. 2; see also id., Ex. 3, Letter from PLIVA’s counsel
dated March 11, 2011).

Based on the foregoing developments,

plaintiffs ask the court to (1) stay all proceedings pending a
decision from the Supreme Court in Demahy and Mensing, and (2)
thereafter enter a new scheduling order moving the trial date and
allowing for additional discovery.

If the court declines to stay

the action, plaintiffs alternatively urge the court to continue
the scheduling order deadlines and grant additional discovery.
In her response, defendant Dr. Deidre E. Parsley asserts that
plaintiffs’ motion should be denied because, among other things,
this court has already determined that PLIVA’s label had no
impact on the prescribing of metoclopramide to Mrs. Meade.

1

On November 24, 2010, the court granted PLIVA’s motion
for summary judgment and dismissed PLIVA from this action.
Meade, 2010 WL 4909435, at *12.
2

II.

A district court has broad discretion to stay an action
as part of its inherent authority to manage its docket.

Wince v.

Easterbrooke Cell. Corp., 681 F. Supp. 2d 688, 692 (N.D. W. Va.
2010) (citing Landis v. North American Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254-55
(1936)).

Nevertheless, the court’s discretion has limits.

“[P]roper use of this authority calls for the exercise of
judgment which must weigh competing interests and maintain an
even balance.

The party seeking a stay must justify it by clear

and convincing circumstances outweighing potential harm to the
party against whom it is operative.”

Williford v. Armstrong

World Indus., Inc., 715 F.2d 124, 127 (4th Cir. 1983) (internal
quotations and citations omitted).

District courts likewise have broad discretion in
deciding whether to grant a continuance or an extension of
discovery.

Martel v. County of Los Angeles, 56 F.3d 993, 995

(9th Cir. 1995); see also United States v. LaRouche, 896 F.2d
815, 823 (4th Cir. 1990) (noting in criminal case that “the
burdensome task of assembling a trial counsels against
continuances, and, therefore, the trial courts must be granted
broad discretion.”).

3

It does not appear to the court that plaintiffs have
offered a sufficient justification for a stay, a continuance, or
additional discovery.

To begin, the consolidated cases currently

pending before the U.S. Supreme Court are unlikely to have any
bearing on the outcome of this litigation.

The question

presented in the consolidated cases concerns whether federal law
preempts state law failure to warn claims against generic drug
manufacturers.2

The Court’s resolution of this question will

have no effect on plaintiffs’ ordinary medical negligence claims
against Dr. Parsley.

As for plaintiffs’ claims against PLIVA,

this court granted summary judgment as to these claims on
causation grounds and did not reach the federal preemption issue.
See Meade, 2010 WL 4909435, at *12 (granting PLIVA’s summary
judgment motion and denying as moot PLIVA’s motion to dismiss
based on federal preemption).

Inasmuch as the consolidated

2

See Brief of Petitioners, PLIVA, Inc. v. Mensing, 131
S. Ct. 817 (2010) (No. 09-993), 2011 WL 219554 at *ii (framing
question presented as follows: “Does the Hatch-Waxman Act preempt
state-law failure-to-warn claims against the manufacturer of a
generic drug whose warnings were, as the Hatch-Waxman Act and the
FDA’s implementing regulations expressly require, ‘the same as’
those the FDA approved for the product's brand-name
equivalent?”); Brief of Respondents in Opp. to Petition for Writ
of Cert., PLIVA, 131 S. Ct. at 817, 2010 WL 1653085 at *i
(framing question presented as follows: “Whether state law
products liability claims brought by injured patients against
manufacturers of generic drugs are impliedly preempted by the
Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act?”).
4

appeals pending before the Supreme Court only raise the federal
preemption issue, and because the resolution of that issue is
immaterial to the basis on which the court dismissed PLIVA in
this action, the court declines to stay this case pending a
decision from the Supreme Court.

The court also does not discern how PLIVA’s recent
disclosure -- namely, that its drug label did not reflect the
2004 label changes of the brand name drug manufacturer -- has any
relevance to this case.

As Dr. Parsley correctly observes, the

court’s decision to grant PLIVA’s summary judgment motion
primarily turned on the undisputed fact that neither Dr. Parsley
nor Mrs. Meade read PLIVA’s drug label.

Specifically, the court

concluded as follows:
In sum, plaintiff did not read the PLIVA labeling when
she used metoclopramide in 2006 and 2007 and neither did
Dr. Parsley. Even if PLIVA had set forth a heightened
warning in its labeling, neither plaintiff nor Dr.
Parsley would have seen it. And so, a stronger warning
by PLIVA would not have affected the behavior of either
plaintiff or Dr. Parsley.
Plaintiffs have therefore
failed to carry their burden of establishing proximate
causation.
Meade, 2010 WL 4909435, at *10.

Thus, whether PLIVA incorporated

the brand name manufacturer’s 2004 label changes in its own
labeling is of no moment, since Mrs. Meade and Dr. Parsley never
read PLIVA’s labeling in the first place.

5

It follows that

PLIVA’s recent disclosure regarding the content of its
metoclopramide labeling provides no basis for a stay, a
continuance, or additional discovery.

Finally, the court notes that the scheduling order
deadlines in this action have already been extended several times
at the parties’ request.

Interests of expediency, efficiency,

and judicial economy therefore weigh heavily in favor of denying
plaintiffs’ motion to modify the scheduling order yet again.

In view of the foregoing, the court concludes that
plaintiffs have failed to offer reasons justifying a stay, a
continuance, or additional discovery.

It is accordingly ORDERED

that plaintiffs’ motion be, and it hereby is, denied.

The Clerk is directed to forward copies of this written
opinion and order to all counsel of record.

DATED: April 15, 2011
John T. Copenhaver, Jr.
United States District Judge

6