Rowe Plastic Surgery of New Jersey v. Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company
Rowe Plastic Surgery of New Jersey, LLC v. Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company
- Ona Wang
- 1:22-cv-07900
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Rowe Plastic Surgery v. Aetna, Judge Wang denied the plaintiffs’ motion to amend because they lacked diligence and amendment would prejudice Aetna.
The plaintiffs’ request to amend their complaint was denied, while Aetna avoided the additional delay and litigation resources that the court found amendment would require. The order left the plaintiffs’ objections to the recommendation to dismiss and the reconsideration order pending.
What happened
In Rowe Plastic Surgery of New Jersey, LLC v. Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, the plaintiffs asked to amend their complaint after a magistrate judge had recommended dismissing the case. The court considered whether the plaintiffs had shown a sufficient reason to change the case schedule and amend their pleading.
The court found that the plaintiffs waited more than a year after an earlier related decision identified problems with their complaint. They did not seek an extension of the amendment deadline, acted only after the recommendation to dismiss was issued, and submitted filings that did not clearly support the motion. The court also found that amendment would delay this case and require Aetna to spend more resources litigating similar issues in multiple cases.
Judge Ona T. Wang denied the motion to amend. This order did not resolve the plaintiffs’ pending objections to the recommendation to dismiss or to the earlier order denying reconsideration.
The detailed version
- Rowe Plastic Surgery of New Jersey v. Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company · No. 1:22-cv-07900
- Ona Wang
- Apr. 3, 2025
Background
The plaintiffs moved to amend their complaint. The case had been referred to Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang for general pretrial management. In December 2024, Judge Wang ordered the plaintiffs to explain why this case and other related cases should not be dismissed in light of a Second Circuit decision. After the plaintiffs did not respond on time, Judge Wang issued a January 13, 2025, report and recommendation recommending dismissal of the case with prejudice.
The plaintiffs then filed several documents, including a response, a motion to amend, and a late request for more time. Judge Wang treated the filings as a request to reconsider the recommendation and denied reconsideration in a January 14 order. The plaintiffs’ objections to the recommendation and the January 14 order remained pending. This opinion addressed the separate question whether the plaintiffs should receive permission to amend their complaint.
Legal standard
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 generally directs courts to freely allow amendments when justice requires. But because the deadline for amending the complaint had already passed under the case-management plan, Rule 16 also applied. That rule requires a party seeking to modify a scheduling deadline to show good cause. The party must show that, despite acting diligently, it could not reasonably have met the deadline.
Courts may also deny amendment because of undue delay, bad faith, futility, or unfair prejudice to the opposing party. Prejudice may include requiring the opposing party to spend significant additional resources or significantly delaying resolution of the dispute.
Court’s reasoning
Judge Wang found that the plaintiffs had not acted diligently. The case-management plan set March 20, 2023, as the last day to amend the complaint, and the plaintiffs had not sought an extension. An earlier related decision issued in December 2023 had identified deficiencies in the complaint and denied further amendment. The plaintiffs nevertheless did not affirmatively seek to amend until more than a year later, after the January 13 report and recommendation recommending dismissal.
The court also found that the plaintiffs’ filings were confusing and procedurally incomplete. The motion’s notice did not attach the documents it referenced, referred only to Rule 15 rather than Rule 16, and did not clearly identify or incorporate the legal arguments submitted separately. Judge Wang concluded that the filings did not provide a sufficient legal basis for the requested amendment.
The court further found that amendment would prejudice Aetna by delaying resolution of this case and potentially other similar cases. Aetna had requested expedited motion practice in several related cases, and allowing amendment at that stage would prolong the litigation and require Aetna to litigate the same issues across multiple cases.
Disposition
Judge Wang found that the plaintiffs had not exercised diligence, that amendment would prejudice Aetna, and that the plaintiffs had shown no good cause for modifying the deadline. To the extent the filing at ECF 64 was a standalone motion to amend the complaint, the court DENIED it.
The court stated that the remaining issues ready for resolution were the plaintiffs’ objections to the denial of reconsideration and, if the district judge considered them timely, their objections to the January 13 report and recommendation. The Clerk was directed to close ECF 64.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.