Court, Explained
U.S. Federal District Courts
Back to docket
N.D. Cal.Procedural orderFiled Sept. 21, 2020

City of Clearlake v. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation

Judge
Robert Illman
Docket
1:20-cv-06212
Court
U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
Pages
2
Civil Procedure
In one sentence

In City of Clearlake v. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation, the panel ordered transfer to Ohio; Judge Illman is listed as the district judge.

Who this affects

The parties to the scheduled City of Clearlake action were affected because the action was ordered transferred from the Northern District of California to the Northern District of Ohio for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.

What happened

City of Clearlake and other parties brought an action listed as a tag-along case in the national prescription-opiate litigation. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation found that the action involved factual questions shared with cases already transferred to Ohio.

The panel conditionally ordered the action transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. The order assigned the action to Judge Dan A. Polster and stated that the transfer would become effective when filed in the Ohio court. The order did not decide the parties’ underlying claims.

The supplied case information identifies Judge Robert Illman as the judge for City of Clearlake v. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation, although the order itself was issued by the Judicial Panel and does not name Judge Illman.

The detailed version

For law students, journalists, and other readers who want the full reasoning

Case
City of Clearlake v. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation · No. 1:20-cv-06212
Judge
Robert Illman
Date
Sept. 21, 2020

Background

This document is Conditional Transfer Order CTO-173 from the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in In re: National Prescription Opiate Litigation, MDL No. 2804. The schedule identifies City of Clearlake et al. v. Amerisourcebergen Drug Corporation et al. as a tag-along action in the Northern District of California.

The Panel stated that earlier actions had been transferred to the Northern District of Ohio under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. It concluded that the action listed in the schedule involved factual questions common to the previously transferred actions.

Ruling

The Panel ordered the scheduled action transferred under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 to the Northern District of Ohio and, with that court’s consent, assigned it to Judge Dan A. Polster. The transfer order was conditional: it would become effective only after filing in the Office of the Clerk of the Northern District of Ohio. The Panel stated that transmission of the order would be stayed for seven days after entry if a party filed an objection, but the text also states that no objection was pending and the stay was lifted.

The order addressed venue and coordinated pretrial management only. It did not rule on the merits of the parties’ claims or defenses.

Disposition and effect

The action was ordered transferred to the Northern District of Ohio for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. The opinion text does not state any final disposition of the claims.

The authoritative version

Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.

Open opinion PDF →
Summary written with AI assistance. See how summaries are made. Spot something wrong? Tell us.