Iglesias v. HRA Pharma America, Inc.
- Rearden
- 1:22-cv-08398
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Iglesias v. HRA Pharma America, Inc., Judge Rearden granted leave to amend and denied the pending dismissal motion as moot.
Isaac Iglesias may file an amended complaint by September 6, 2023. HRA Pharma America, Inc.’s pending motion to dismiss was denied as moot, and HRA could choose to move against the amended complaint.
What happened
Isaac Iglesias brought Iglesias v. HRA Pharma America, Inc. as a proposed class action, claiming that HRA violated New York laws against deceptive business practices and false advertising and was unjustly enriched.
HRA asked the court to dismiss the complaint, arguing in part that federal food-and-drug law prevented Iglesias’s claims. Iglesias instead asked for permission to file an amended complaint. The court granted that request and did not decide whether the original claims were legally sufficient.
Judge Jennifer H. Rearden ordered Iglesias to file the amended complaint by September 6, 2023. She denied HRA’s pending motion to dismiss as moot, meaning the motion no longer required a ruling because an amended complaint would replace the original one.
The detailed version
- Iglesias v. HRA Pharma America, Inc. · No. 1:22-cv-08398
- Rearden
- Aug. 16, 2023
Background
Isaac Iglesias filed a proposed class action against HRA Pharma America, Inc. He asserted claims under New York General Business Law §§ 349 and 350 for allegedly deceptive business practices and false advertising, as well as a claim for unjust enrichment.
HRA moved to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal for failure to state a legally sufficient claim. HRA argued, among other things, that federal law and regulations under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act preempted Iglesias’s claims, meaning that federal law displaced those state-law claims.
Leave to Amend
Iglesias asked the court, as an alternative to denying the dismissal motion, for permission to amend his complaint under Rule 15. Because his request came more than 21 days after service of the complaint and the motion to dismiss, the request was governed by Rule 15(a)(2). That rule generally directs courts to freely allow amendment when justice requires, unless factors such as undue delay, bad faith, repeated failure to correct deficiencies, undue prejudice, or obvious futility weigh against it.
The court found that amendment was appropriate. It determined that the request was unlikely to cause undue delay because the action had been filed less than a year earlier and Iglesias sought amendment before HRA filed an answer. The court also found no other factor weighing against amendment. In particular, it was not prepared to conclude that amendment would obviously be futile and believed further briefing would help evaluate the sufficiency of the amended complaint.
Disposition
The court granted Iglesias’s request for leave to amend his complaint. It ordered him to file the amended complaint by September 6, 2023. The court denied HRA’s pending motion to dismiss the original complaint as moot and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate that motion. The court did not decide HRA’s preemption argument or the merits of Iglesias’s underlying claims. The court stated that HRA could move to dismiss the amended complaint and required the parties to propose a briefing schedule by joint letter if HRA chose to do so.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.