Teague, et al v. Johnson & Johnson, et al

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This case arose when 702 plaintiffs from 26 different states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico filed twelve nearly identical product liability actions against the defendants in the District Court of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. The defendants are manufacturers of transvaginal mesh medical devices. The plaintiffs were women who were implanted with the devices and their husbands, who assert loss-of-consortium claims. None of the individual actions contained 100 or more plaintiffs. Each of the actions included at least one New Jersey resident plaintiff. Each complaint specifically disclaimed federal question and federal diversity jurisdiction, and included provisions that admitted the claims had been joined for the purpose of pretrial discovery and proceedings but disclaimed joinder for trial purposes. All twelve actions were assigned to the same state court judge. The defendants, corporate residents of New Jersey, removed the actions to the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, relying on both diversity jurisdiction and Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) removal jurisdiction, arguing that complete diversity existed between the parties because in each action, the New Jersey citizen plaintiff had been fraudulently joined and should therefore be disregarded for diversity purposes. They further contended that jurisdiction was available under CAFA’s "mass action" provision because, by filing all of the suits in the same court before the same judge, plaintiffs had proposed a joint trial of claims involving more than 100 plaintiffs. Plaintiffs moved to remand eleven of the actions, involving 650 plaintiffs, to state court. The district court granted their motion. It declined to adopt the procedural misjoinder doctrine raised by the defendants, and concluded that plaintiffs had not in fact proposed a joint trial of their claims. Defendants appealed that order to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Finding no reversible error, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the remand of those cases to state court. View "Teague, et al v. Johnson & Johnson, et al" on Justia Law