In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:18-cv-01586
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation: Judge Corley denied Chart Industries’ request to dismiss the complaints for excessive detail under Rule 8.
Chart Industries Inc. and the 133 plaintiffs in the consolidated actions. Chart’s motion to dismiss was denied, and Chart was ordered to answer the consolidated complaints within 14 days.
What happened
In re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation involves 133 consolidated individual lawsuits arising from a March 2018 incident involving a cryopreservation tank that stored plaintiffs’ eggs and embryos. Chart Industries Inc., which manufactured the tank, was the sole remaining defendant after the other defendants were compelled to arbitration.
Chart asked the court to dismiss the complaints because they allegedly contained too much evidentiary detail, repetition, and argumentative language. The court ruled that the complaints’ detailed allegations about the tank, its alleged failure, and the resulting harm did not justify dismissal, especially because Chart did not claim it was unable to respond.
Judge Jacquelyn Scott Corley denied Chart’s motion to dismiss and ordered Chart to answer the consolidated complaints within 14 days.
The detailed version
- In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation · No. 3:18-cv-01586
- Jacquelyn Corley
- Oct. 5, 2020
Background
The consolidated cases arose from a March 2018 incident involving a cryopreservation tank that stored plaintiffs’ eggs and embryos. Chart Industries Inc., the tank’s manufacturer, was the sole remaining defendant because the other defendants had been compelled to arbitration. After the court denied plaintiffs’ request to certify a class, 133 class members filed individual actions. Those actions were consolidated under the lead case number.
Each plaintiff’s 15-page complaint asserted three claims: strict products liability based on a manufacturing defect, strict products liability based on a design defect, and negligent failure to recall. The complaints included detailed factual allegations about the tank, its functions, its alleged failure, and the alleged resulting harm.
Motion and analysis
Chart moved to dismiss all 133 consolidated actions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, which requires a complaint to contain a “short and plain statement of the claim.” Chart argued that the complaints were unnecessarily long in substance because they contained excessive evidentiary detail, redundancy, and argumentative language.
The court explained that although Rule 8 does not require this level of detail, it did not fault plaintiffs for providing it. The court distinguished the Ninth Circuit decisions cited by Chart because those cases involved dismissals under Rule 41(b) after plaintiffs failed to comply with orders requiring amended complaints that followed Rule 8. The court also stated that dismissal for violating Rule 8 is generally limited to complaints so verbose, confused, or repetitive that their substance is concealed, and that dismissal is a harsh remedy for which less drastic alternatives should first be considered.
The court found dismissal unwarranted under the circumstances. Chart objected to the dramatic nature of the allegations, but it did not contend that it was unable to respond to them because of how the complaints were written. The court stated that difficulty responding was not enough to warrant dismissal.
Disposition
The court DENIED Chart’s motion to dismiss. It ordered Chart to file its answer to the consolidated complaints within 14 days and stated that the order disposed of Docket No. 547.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.