Guardant Health, Inc. v. Natera, Inc.

Nature of the Order

This is a Final Pretrial Conference Order governing the parties’ upcoming jury trial. It does not announce a verdict or decide the parties’ underlying claims.

Trial Schedule and Time Limits

The court set jury selection for November 5, 2024, in San Francisco before Judge Edward M. Chen. The listed trial dates were November 5–7, November 12–15, and November 18, 22, and 25, 2024. The court estimated six to seven court days. Each party was initially limited to 18 hours for opening statements, evidence, direct and cross-examinations, and closing arguments. The court deducted one hour from Natera’s time because of what it described as Natera’s excessive deposition designations and objections, leaving Natera with 17 hours.

Evidence, Objections, and Deposition Testimony

The court required advance notice concerning exhibits and demonstratives and directed the parties to meet and confer about objections. Unresolved objections were to be presented in joint statements filed 24 hours before the relevant trial day. The court warned that unreasonable objections could result in sanctions, including deductions from trial time.

The court rejected Natera’s position that it could automatically present deposition testimony from adverse corporate-designee witnesses even when those witnesses appeared live. The court ruled that deposition testimony for live adverse witnesses would not be allowed without a stipulation, except for impeachment. The court expected witnesses to be prepared to testify about the topics for which they had been designated.

Motion for Leave

Guardant moved for permission to file an additional motion in limine concerning Natera chief executive officer Matthew Rabinowitz. The court denied leave to file that additional motion. The court warned Natera not to exceed the scope of Rabinowitz’s previously permitted testimony.

Jury Instructions

The court attached final jury instructions consisting of stipulated instructions, unobjected-to portions of the court’s proposed instructions, and the court’s rulings on disputed instructions.

For the Lanham Act false-advertising claims, the instructions explained that a statement may be literally false, including by necessary implication, or may be literally true but misleading. The jury was instructed to consider an advertisement in the context of the entire advertisement. For statements based on peer-reviewed, published scientific studies, the court accepted Natera’s proposed wording for the instruction’s first requirement: the statement must not be supported on its face by the study, meaning that even if the study is reliable, it does not establish the statement at issue.

The court overruled Natera’s objections to a proposed comparative-advertising instruction and kept the instruction concerning California common-law unfair competition. It also adopted instructions concerning actual damages, corrective advertising, disgorgement of profits, and punitive damages. In the actual-damages instruction, the court added the word “allowable” to the description of expenses. It deleted a provision concerning future corrective-advertising costs in light of the exclusion of COBRA. For the disgorgement instruction, the court replaced references to “infringement” and “sale of its product” with “false advertising.” The court declined Guardant’s additional proposed language about deducting expenses and overhead.

The parties stipulated to a willful-false-advertising instruction. The court stated that after trial it would decide whether the case warranted enhanced damages, attorney’s fees, or prejudgment interest. After Natera withdrew Dr. Hochster as a witness, the court determined that no special credibility instruction concerning Dr. Hochster was needed.

Verdict Form and Other Pretrial Matters

The court overruled or otherwise rejected Natera’s renewed objections concerning separate questions about misleading statements, exemplary advertisements attached to the verdict form, and punitive damages. The court revised the verdict form to include the burden of proof in Question 2 and otherwise overruled Natera’s third objection.

The court noted that it had already ruled on deposition-designation objections concerning Nitin Sood and Ryan Corcoran. It would not rule on Dr. Parikh’s deposition-designation objections because she was expected to appear live. The court said it would address objections to the revised list of required exhibits by trial and directed that any further trial motion practice be filed by 6:00 p.m. for consideration the following trial day.