Bookends & Beginnings LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc.

Background

Bookends & Beginnings LLC filed this action on March 25, 2021, and later filed an amended complaint on July 9, 2021. The defendants are Amazon.com, Inc. and the publisher defendants: Hachette Book Group, Inc.; HarperCollins Publishers LLC; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC; Penguin Random House LLC; and Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The defendants filed separate motions to dismiss the amended complaint. Amazon and the publisher defendants also filed motions to strike the plaintiff’s class allegations. Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo held oral argument and issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that the court dismiss all of the plaintiff’s claims. She separately recommended that the motions to strike be denied as premature if the district court did not dismiss the case.

Review of the Recommendation

Bookends & Beginnings filed objections to substantially all of Judge Figueredo’s conclusions. Judge Woods treated the objections as sufficiently specific for a fresh review of the challenged issues. After reviewing the motion papers and the objections, he rejected the objections and adopted the Report and Recommendation in full.

Rulings

The court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss without prejudice. Because it granted those motions, the court denied the defendants’ motions to strike the plaintiff’s class allegations as moot. The clerk was directed to terminate the motions listed at Docket Nos. 75, 77, and 79.

The court also granted Bookends & Beginnings leave to amend the complaint. It concluded that a further amendment could not be found futile at that stage and that the plaintiff had not yet had the benefit of a ruling identifying the complaint’s deficiencies. Any amended complaint had to be filed within 30 days of the order.